


Stumbling

by dgeheimnis



Series: Gravity [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Demonic Possession, F/F, Femslash, Romance, Vampire Laura Hollis, Vampire Turning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-03-23 01:01:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3749188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dgeheimnis/pseuds/dgeheimnis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was in the smallness of that moment, traced back to those pivotal four words “even you deserve better,” that Carmilla made her critical mistake. Everything changed. If brought to bear and Carmilla had to choose between either being unforgivable and saving Laura or doing the right thing, she would save Laura every time.  (Set canonically in between the first and second season.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> “You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don’t think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.”  
> —   
> Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

_[Present day]_

The cold wind ricocheted across the mountain. Frigid though she was, it was the farthest thing from her mind.

Carmilla reached out to trace the edges of Laura’s face. However her hand stopped just short, frozen in the space between, her fingers curling away as if magnetically repelled by the other girl’s innocence. In that moment, she deemed herself unworthy. While seeming almost entirely composed of sweetness, Laura had always looked the most angelic asleep. It was strange to still see that innocence in her face even now.

Apologies were a curious phenomenon to the vampire. She could never quite understand the point of them exactly. Children were forced to say sorry after fighting over a toy or pulling hair. Politicians recited carefully crafted mea culpas after being caught. Lovers often got down on both knees begging, repeating “I’m so sorry” over and over, pleading for forgiveness, desperate for a chance to start over.

The problem was they asked for the impossible. They wished for something that does not exist. There is no such thing as a fresh start or a clean slate. There is no way to render spoken words unsaid or unjust actions undone. Apologies, while perhaps lovely to hear, were merely words where some syllables were emptier than others. Mea culpa: a hope, a request, perhaps even an intention, arguably a foolishness. Never an actual promise. They change nothing. Apologies were a fallacy.

If  that then more importantly: what was forgiveness? That was what she wanted most of all. If apologies meant nothing, did nothing, how could she ever hope to be truly forgiven?

Carmilla avoided looking at either LaFontaine or Perry as they loomed behind her. She already knew that they expected a solution, a happy ending, and that in their youth they were still so full of hope and unable to process the pain. They had no idea what they were really asking her to do. They had no context, no actual understanding. How could they? They were human, and children at that.

Carmilla wasn’t though and she knew better. Sin dwelled deep within her bone marrow and what they wanted her to do was unforgivable even to her. There would be no coming back from what they wanted, needed her to do. They had only begun to implore her. Truth was, her mind was already made up. She had made it in a heart beat. Any pretense that she was strong enough to do otherwise was only delaying the inevitable.  In all her centuries, she rarely sought forgiveness for her actions. Now, before the deed was done, she was already craving it.

* * *

_[Earlier]_

Her chipped black fingernail polish suited her nicely. Perfectly even. To an unobservant eye, they would appear to be an oversight, further proof of her youthful, devil may care attitude. However, it would be wrong to assume that the occasional mismatched blacks meant that she did not painstakingly curate every aspect of her appearance. Every detail was carefully constructed battle armor, a disguise engineered to fool even the most careful eye. Everything down to the Rorschach-like patterns of her remaining nail polish was chosen to make her seem as human as possible. From the moment one saw her, one was entirely convinced of her humanity without even realizing that the question had been raised.

It was an art where she had plenty of practice. Changing hair styles only served as a minor distraction to the dull monotony of remaining in a young girl’s body for centuries on end. Luckily, unlike fashion trends and human lives that came and went quickly, the underlining humanity she mimicked remained constant across centuries. No matter what the appropriate skirt length was that decade, what made someone human never truly altered.

Despite this, however, Carmilla struggled harder and harder to maintain it. As the years accumulated unnoticed against her forever youthful skin, she felt herself clutching harder and harder to what little tattered shreds of her humanity that she had left. She hoped, she prayed that there even a small portion of her soul that might still be considered redeemable if held up to the right light. If one squinted hard enough perhaps they might find the smallest glimmer of goodness burrowed deep within her. That was all she wanted. However, in her darker moment, she knew she could not continue to fool herself for much longer.

After all, the past was only long gone in a metaphorical sense. In the present, it haunted her, tortured her. Twisted her. Under the patience of the ocean, even the largest boulder turns to sand eventually. What was innocence and goodness to time and reality? Soon, she knew, all that would be left of her would be her Mother.

She had seen this erosion happen with others of her kind. It was surprisingly quick with Will. Perhaps he knew something she refused to learn. Apparently a sweet and loving human while alive, literally a choir boy if she was not mistaken, Will had embraced his more sociopathic tendencies once Mother turned him.

Or socio-pathetic. The momma’s boy was more or less useless as far as Carmilla was concerned. Yet, unlike countless other minions before him, he remained alive and close to Mother’s side all this time. Apparently chosen to be Carmilla’s replacement when she was interred deep underground, what he lacked in brains and subtly, he made up for in raw loyalty to Mother. Between the two vampiric brunettes, they made both the perfect minion and the absolute worst. It was because of this that the two begrudgingly made a complete set for Mother Dearest.

From where she lounged uncomfortably on the rock hard couch in the Dean’s office, Carmilla eyed the boy who was considered her brother in all but human genetics as they both waited for Mother. Curled up by the fireplace with his tongue partially sticking out of the corner of his mouth, Will was concentrating on some beeping annoyance of a game on his phone. The digital din created a disruptive soundtrack to the first half decent essay on Goethe that she had read in the past decade. Her mind was devising a myriad of ways to break the infernal contraption when the door finally opened with a swift confidence.

“Hello, children,” Mother entered the room, barely scanning the room to ensure that they had indeed appeared when She called. She trusted, knew that they were not stupid enough to defy Her. The Dean had once again purposefully arrived an hour late. It was important to remind underlings who was in charge and whose time was actually valuable. Other times, She would arrive hours early, accusing them of being late even as they arrived well in advance of the exact hour She called.

“Mother,” Will’s face lit up immediately, his phone pocketed before the second syllable passed his lips. He was well aware of how much She did not care for such trivial, modern devices. Having one at all was probably his one and only rebellion. Pathetic.

Carmilla sat up straighter, closing her book slowly and tucking it off to the side, acknowledging Her presence but not verbally greeting Her. The young vampire had learned that after her imprisonment, it was often better to be seen and not heard.

“We might have a situation,” the Dean continued, never one for pleasantries. “The roommate of the latest girl is making a nuisance of herself.” She leaned up against her desk in an almost primal fashion. The desk, older than Carmilla, was a large and imposing oak presence that perfectly matched the formidable presence of her Mother. Often Carmilla had tried to picture Her as a human and always failed.

“Want me to go shut her up?” Will shot up, always the eager and violent school boy.

“What kind of nuisance?” Carmilla perked up as well, though not as boisterously as her brother. Maybe this wouldn’t be as dull as she had anticipated. Truthfully, Betty had been a nuisance from the start, as often was the case with targets assigned to Will. She had already been tasked with intervening twice. It made sense that there still might be some extra janitorial work now that the target had finally been acquired.

“The standard banal human behavior: calling the campus police, the cops, anyone who will listen for five minutes about her poor, missing party girl roommate Betsy.” The Dean pouted playfully, speaking a bored tone before rolling her eyes.

“Betty,” Carmilla muttered under her breath, correcting her Mother before realizing the name had escaped her lips.

“She’s proving more determined than most,” Mother continued on as if She did not hear or register the correction.

“It always dies down. Humans have the shortest attention spans. Besides, if she’s too much trouble, we are still down a target. Young girl hysterical over missing roommate drives herself to a neurotic break down, goes home to recover and never comes back to school, easy end to the predictable story.” Carmilla shrugged apathetically, wishing she could return to her book. This conversation had proved to be dull. Always the same, every time. The word nuisance had given the her so much misplaced hope but even the variations were repetitions as this point.

“I want her watched closely.” The Dean strummed Her fingers across the wooden desk, playing a thought out in her head before standing up and walking towards Carmilla. “I think this requires a more feminine touch. Her room is now half empty after all. It would be rude to miss such an easy and glaring opportunity.” Her hand delicately traced down Carmilla’s face before tapping playfully, affectionately on her nose. It sent chills of revulsion down Carmilla’s spine and required every inch of willpower for her to not recoil from something she had once longed for so completely.

Carmilla opened her mouth to protest and closed it again. Carmilla exhaled in defeat, her voice a declawed growl. “Fine. I’ll clean up Will’s mess yet again.”

“Don’t hiss at your brother, Carmilla. It’s unbecoming.” Her Mother chided, once again tapping Carmilla on the nose. This time it was less playful, the gesture having more similarities with whacking a pet on the nose with a rolled up newspaper.

“Yeah, Kitty.” Will, who always enjoyed a good Carmilla scolding, beamed.

“As you said, should she prove too much of a nuisance for my patience, she’ll simply become part of The Sacrifice. The job will already be half completed and then you’ll have the whole dorm room to yourself. That should suit you nicely. A nice break from living with human children. For now, simply observe and distract her where you can. Hopefully between schoolwork and you, she’ll quickly forget enough about little old Beth.”

“Betty.”

The Dean shrugged as she walked back to her desk. “Humans call themselves all sorts of things these days. One does not name sacrificial lambs, my dear. It’s gauche. Now be a good girl and go pack your things.”

“Have fun, Sourpuss.” Will waved, smiling childishly, thinking he won, thinking he had Mother all to himself.

“As you wish, Mother.” Carmilla bowed her head slightly before sliding out of the room. It wouldn’t take long to pack. Over the centuries one learned how not to accumulate so much stuff. She’d probably even have time to redo her nails. Maybe a nice deep crimson would be a good change of pace.

Carmilla had heard Betty speak about her sweet if a little endearingly dorky roommate. Adorkable was the strange slang the brainwashed blonde had used. The vampire wasn’t too worried. She just had to watch this young child and make sure she didn’t do anything too incredibly stupid. This human babysitting, it was demeaning but it shouldn’t be that difficult.

* * *

It was harder than she thought.

There was barely a dorm room in all of Silas that Carmilla hadn’t been in for some reason or another. Even before visiting Betty that one time, she wasn’t a stranger to Room 307. In the 1970s, it had been her dorm room for the better part of a semester. But last time she had been lucky enough to not have a roommate. Forty years and an extra twin bed later, the room was arranged entirely differently. Carmilla could smell how the time had passed. She was thankful that what was probably once an undoubtably overpowering stench of weed was now barely a twenty-something year old whisper clinging to the walls.

Her new roommate, however, operated on a much higher decibel. Arguably, Carmilla should have knocked when she arrived. The naive cupcake, still hysterical over her missing roommate, did not exactly give the warmest welcome. And it was in those first few moments, in the midst the “who the hell are you?” greeting, that Carmillla made her first, albeit minor, mistake. Luckily Laura was so caught up in her whole “woe is me and my missing roommate Betty” routine that she failed to notice that Carmilla knew exactly which side of the room was now hers and exactly where the speakers were located.

That was only the beginning. It was nearly unbearable living with the human child. Chore wheels were apparently an unfortunately very real modern development. Small in stature, Laura constantly found ways to fill the entire room with her presence. The girl had a habit of waking up at the godforsaken hour of anytime before noon. She was prone to dropping books ‘by accident’ before dashing off to class and slamming the door behind her at a consistently passive aggressive volume. Then there was the almost worrying need to record almost every waking moment on that silly camera of hers, seeming to hit pause only long enough to edit and upload the damn things.

Since Carmilla was denied the ability to make a good first impression, there was no way she could easily recite from the age-old fast friend script. Almost liberating, she veered entirely off the beaten path and became the worst roommate ever to this shrill, tightly wound girl. It wasn’t that hard. In fact, she found herself rather enjoying winding the other girl up. The freshman was unbelievably cute when annoyed. Since her orders were to be a distraction, spending her days concocting ways to get the other girl’s face to scrunch up adorably could easily be deemed an appropriate use of Carmilla’s time. Soon her Mother would pick the final target and this would all be over by the end of the semester.

It couldn’t come fast enough. Carmilla looked forward to the silence of being on her own again. Having a living body, a human soul sleeping innocently on the other side of the room was unnerving. Laura’s naive enthusiasm in her cockeyed, ill-fated search for Betty was grating at the best of times. Then there were the gargantuan amazon wannabe's bumbling attempts at flirting. These were underscored and made worse by the accompanying soundtrack of the incessant pitter patter of co-eds playing out exhausted tropes that they believed to be necessary parts of the fallacy of youth.

The whole experience was demeaning. Every smile, every enthusiastically misguided but well-intentioned action felt to be a personal assault against Carmilla.

But then Laura said the words "even you deserve better." And there it was: a faint taste of hope. In that moment Carmilla forgot that hope was the most painful kind of poison.

It was in the smallness of that moment, traced back to those pivotal four words “even you deserve better” that Carmilla made her second, much larger, and critical mistake. Everything changed.

Laura’s most annoying quality was also her best. The small human child still saw the world as good and as beautiful, as pure and as salvageable. She still believed in the redeemable nature of people, she still hunted for proof of this and believed that she would actually find it.

And Carmilla, who so very much wanted to be deemed good, longed for Laura to not only look but discover that part of her. To prove that somehow it still existed. That despite it all, despite all the muddiness, the dirtiness, the blood, betrayal, and tears, there was some small part of her that might find redemption. Maybe she needed Laura’s eyes to help her find it. She did not think she was sweet or good, but maybe redeemable. Or at least perhaps not entirely despicable.

If anyone could believe it, could even manage to find it, maybe it was Laura.

* * *

As the weeks wore on, Room 307 still had an intermingling scent of Laura and Betty combined with the subtle stale undertones of all the other years and semesters past. Carmilla’s bed, Carmilla’s pillow smelled like Betty’s bed, Betty’s pillow. At night this fact invaded her nostrils, naming her an impostor, judging her guilty as an accomplice, haunting her conscience with that sickeningly sweet scent eighteen year old girls so often left behind. 

Carmilla had done nothing to try and save Betty. Like so many times countless times before, she allowed a bright, intelligent woman to melt away into a party obsessed shell of a being before disappearing altogether. At the end of the day, her hands were just as dirty. And the whole room, shrouded in the aftermath, taunted her, eating away at her in ways unnoticed by the humans around her. The vampire knew it would be at least two months until the smell of Betty dwindled away to an easily ignorable volume. In the meantime, there were not enough candles in Styria to successfully mask this torture.

But Laura’s bed, Laura’s pillow smelled wholly of Laura. It was a sanctuary and Carmilla looked forward to the reprieve of fruity shampoos and lotions that did little to hide the very human-ness that radiated off of her.

Carmilla gravitated towards the yellow pillow in particular, wanting to cloak the scent of Betty with it while simultaneously exasperating the short human further. Using its proxy to Laura as a protective talisman in a way. Wishing to intoxicate herself with it, not only to escape from but an escape to. She never actually minded when Laura would eventually take it back. It only freshened the scent, making the pillow all the more desirable. After a while, Carmilla wanted the pillow like she would never allowed herself to want another person.

But she did want Laura.

She wanted Laura more than she had wanted anything or anyone in a long time. She had thought this part of her successfully vanquished, only to find that her heart had only been obscured, hidden behind layers of dust and dirt and only barely lost among scar tissue and centuries of baggage. Laura, without trying or even wanting to, breathed life back into the vampire’s heart.

Rationally, Carmilla understood the precarious nature of her situation. Humans do not love vampires unless it was on network TV. And Laura? She was the sweet, innocent, and naive potential target. Carmilla had already done this dance before and did not believe she could survive it a second time around. How could she be so foolish as to let it happen? This was Einstein’s very definition of insanity.

It had been an incredibly stupid moment of weakness to give Laura that cup of hot chocolate. All the more embarrassing that the idea was initially planted in her head by that infantile frat boy. At least there was safety in knowing that Laura was entirely oblivious that Carmilla was trying, actually trying. God, how embarrassing.

Even that was vexing. She, a centuries old vampire, frustrated that a human child didn’t notice her pathetic advances. An entire lecture about Goethe was wasted on Carmilla mentally berating herself about that hot chocolate, that moment of weakness. Not that the visiting lecturer had anything new to say about the German philosopher. Like everything else at this cursed University, it was a near exact carbon copy of everything she had been hearing for decades. It was a wonder she still sometimes showed up at all.

Hoping Laura would be miraculously gone from their room by the time she got back, Carmilla headed straight back after her lecture. She lingered momentarily outside the dormitory, steeling herself against the horrid displays of youth that would accost her in the hallways. How she longed to be anywhere but here, but she had no idea where she’d rather be. With a doomed realization, she knew herself to be once again a lovesick fool.

She mounted the stairs to her dorm room with a growing sense of dread. Perhaps it was a premonition. As she turned down the hallway, she was faced with the very real sight of her Mother standing at her door. Carmilla froze, eyes darting wildly in search of an escape route. There was nowhere to hide: no unlocked door to dash cowardly behind and no window to leap stupidly out of. Damn traditional Gregorian dormitory design. Hiding behind the trash can was childish and useless, so was turning around, walking away, and hoping to go unnoticed. She was trapped. Her heart dropped as the Dean shifted her attention and made eye contact.

“I sent for you.” The Dean approached the younger vampire, calmly, seemingly unperturbed.

“I was coming. I’ve been occupied,” Carmilla tried to sound casual.

“Doubtful,” Her Mother scoffed. They both knew any paper Carmilla was going to hand in was written decades ago. Her grades and her participation at this institution didn’t matter and could be adjusted as necessary without Carmilla lifting a pencil.

“I’m following orders,” Carmilla stated.

“We both know that’s not entirely true. I didn’t go out of my way to get you accepted to this university to have you behaving like this.”

“You wanted me to watch the situation closely. I’m watching the situation closely, including those damn videos.” Carmilla tried to make and maintain eye contact with limited success.

“Not closely enough. It appears to be getting away from you, I am afraid. If you don’t take care of this situation, I will.”

“I have it handled more than you think.” Carmilla tried to assure her Mother. Her mind raced frantically, trying to devise a way to keep Laura safe and her Mother happy. She thought she had more time. Damn Laura and those infernal videos of hers.

“I hope so, for your own sake.” The Dean glared, examining Carmilla closely for a moment and, not for the first time, seeming to find her wanting. “You know what to do. You can’t afford to disappoint me again.”

Carmilla opened her mouth, thought better of it, and closed it slowly. She had known that this was coming. She had expected that Laura would become the next target, assumed it, and at one point suggested it even. Hearing it, however, caught her blindsided. “As you wish,” her voice smaller, instantly betraying weakness. Underneath it all, she was still the same frail, stupid child she was at 18. As the Dean walked away, Carmilla realized not for the first time that hope was for humans and often, not even then. It was like Ell all over again.

Except, she couldn’t accept it. Not again. Not Laura. Somewhere between “who the hell are you” and “even you deserver better,” Carmilla had already made her decision: this time she would try to save Laura. It wouldn’t be like Ell all over again.

* * *

_[Present Day]_

Carmilla crouched in front of Laura’s still figure. Her hand slipped away from the girl’s neck, unable to maintain contact. Her eyes remained locked on the ground, unable to look at the body in front of her or the two red heads behind her.

“It’s too late.”

“What do you mean it’s too late?” Perry protested, her arms uncrossed stubbornly across her chest and gestured uselessly into the wind. The shadows stretched out before Carmilla let her know that LaFontaine had crumpled slightly against their friend.

“It’s too late,” Carmilla repeated, unable to say anything else. She didn’t have time for Perry’s inability to process reality.

“Well I don’t accept that!” Perry shouted.

“It’s not exactly your choice here, sweetheart,” Carmilla nearly growled, whipping around to finally look at the two holding each other dearly against the truth. There was no one who would hold Carmilla. Not now and hopefully not ever again. Fool her twice, shame on her. Perhaps now this part of her would finally die. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“This is not how this happens. It’s not just out of the blue, one minute you’re alive and the next-…” Perry continued, her body shaking from emotion. Her arms gestured pointlessly in the nothingness of the mountain air. “You have to check again. You’re not doing it right. She was walking not even two minutes ago. She was practically dancing! This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.”

“This is exactly how it happens.” Carmilla shook her head, the world throbbing in her ears. She wanted, she needed a moment of silence. Yet Perry kept talking. Why wouldn’t she stop talking? Couldn’t she process it in silence and stop making it so very real, so very visceral for the rest of them? “This is exactly how it always happens. Every damn time. People die. They die.”

“That’s not how it happened with you,” There was a strangeness to LaFontaine’s voice that set Carmilla instantly on edge. “And there is something we can do. Or, at least, something you can do.”

The wind howled through the silence as Carmilla worked through what LaFontaine was implying. “You can’t seriously be asking me to do what I think you’re asking me to do,” Carmilla stared at them in disbelief. Her words were slow and deliberate, trying to impart the sheer insanity behind this implied request.

“It’s the only chance we have to save her,” LaFontaine insisted, already becoming bolder and more confident with their suggestion.

“That’s not how it works. You don’t save someone by turning them into a vampire!” Carmilla shouted. Once said, the words hung suspended in the cold mountain air. The thought, once cloudy, ethereal and slippery to the touch, was now a very real thing before them. It had almost a physical presence, a weight and a heft to it. With a breath and form of its own, it fought to take hold. The thought was already beyond a suggestion. It was a possibility.


	2. Chapter 2

Laura jolted awake. Momentarily disoriented, her eyes flickered around the darkness of her surroundings trying to snag onto something familiar. As the cloudiness of a deep and heavy sleep cleared and she remembered where she was, her strange and intoxicating dream lingering at the edges of her consciousness. She reached up and examined her lips tentatively with her finger tips. They were cracked again, tender to her touch and held the faint hint of dried blood. Laura hated the dryness of the dorms. Her hand then moved down to inspect her neck, a habit she had developed upon discovering her roommate was an actual vampire. Nothing, no tell tale marks.

Her eyes darted to the blinking light on her cellphone. Flipping it open to find the time, she discovered that it was well past three in the morning. She wondered if she would be able to fall back asleep again, or even if she wanted to. Instead of being curled up peacefully asleep in the darkness and having the normal anxiety dreams about taking exams naked, she had once again dreamed about Carmilla in a decidedly non-platonic way. It was hard to ignore how real it felt even now. She could still almost feel the sensation of the woman kissing her neck.

Not that such an exchange was an actual possibility at the moment or probably ever. In front of her, Carmilla was clearly still very much asleep. The vampire’s head bobbed gently as one was apt to do when they fell asleep sitting up. Or, in Carmilla’s case, tied to a chair. Not for the first time Laura observed that the position couldn’t be remotely comfortable, especially after so many days.

Quietly, Laura slipped out of bed, padded across the floor and moved out into the dorm hallway. The harsh fluorescent lights bathed her in a false sense industrial normalcy as she slid down to the floor. Holding her head in her hands, she exhaled deeply. What was she even doing? She couldn’t stand keeping Carmilla tied up for much longer. The others didn’t understand. They didn’t fall asleep and wake up to the sight of her captive form. With every passing night, Laura felt like she was more and more turning into a cruel, heartless monster. It was inhumane, this prolonged captivity. Even if the other girl was a vampire.

Tomorrow she’d call everyone back together. They could discuss and hopefully ultimately agree that in light of everything Carmilla had confessed that they should let her go. It had to be possible to free her roommate in way that would ensure everyone’s safety and comfort.

Slightly buoyed by this resolution, Laura still lingered in the hallway. Her fingers played with a frayed edge of her pajama pants. Under the fluorescent lights, she felt her dream slip further away as she tried to grasp onto the fading fragments. When had it happened, she wondered, when had she managed to fall for her vampiric roommate?

No. It couldn’t be a crush. That was impossible.

The only reason this was happening was because Carmilla claimed that she was hitting on Laura that one time. It was the power of suggestion, it had to be. It’s not like Laura actually had feelings for her broody roommate. First of all, how did she even know that what Carmilla wasn’t lying? The other girl was probably only trying to play at her heartstrings in order to be untied. That was just like something a vampire would do.

Her roommate was a vampire. An exceedingly attractive vampire. However it didn’t matter how surprisingly charming or maybe even sweet she was when no one else was looking. Carmilla was a vampire, which placed her significantly above Laura in the food chain. There was no way that she could be developing feelings for a silly little human. If Carmilla craved Laura, it wasn’t in a romantic or sexual way that’s for sure. What Laura needed to do was to remind herself that behind those extremely kissable lips was a pair of sharp, blood thirsty fangs.

* * *

  
Carmilla awoke several hours later to Laura sitting remarkably close to her. With a smile, the young girl enthusiastically held out the mug of blood to her captive roommate. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” the brunette drawled, clearly unsure of what to make of the sight before her.

However, Laura ignored her roommate’s side eye as she continued to proudly hold out the mug, adjusting the straw slightly so that Carmilla could more easily grasp it with minimal effort. Without further comment, Carmilla leaned forward, captured the straw between her lips and pretended not to notice how Laura seemed to unconsciously bite her lip.

“Anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” Laura inquired after Carmilla spit out the straw, seemingly satisfied after emptying the mug. Carmilla glared slightly in response, only prompting Laura to continue. “Another mug of blood perhaps?”

“I imagine untying me would be out of the question,” Carmilla remarked coolly.

“Kind of, yeah,” Laura shrugged. “The whole blood sucking vampire thing, you know.”

“And yet you want to make sure I’m comfortable?” Carmilla arched an eyebrow, both amused and intrigued with this confusing turn of events “You afraid I’m going to write a bad review on the internet? The ropes chafed and she never offered to scratch my nose. One star.”

“Oh god, are they chafing?” Laura leapt up to examine the ropes and then froze, unsure if this was a trick and even why she cared this much if they did indeed chafe.

Carmilla shrugged to the best of her abilities. “Vampiric constitution, princess. Doesn’t bother me a bit.” She paused, examining her small roommate with a renewed and singular curiosity. It was becoming clear that some sort of shift with the other girl had occurred. However Carmilla could not quite place what the shift was or why it had occurred. All she knew was that Laura was somehow different and the vampire wasn’t sure she could trust it. “I’ve lived through worse."

Laura stood up, stretching and unintentionally showing off her bare midriff. If she noticed Carmilla licking her lips, she pretended otherwise. “Okay. Well anyway, gotta go to class and study for my Lit midterm tomorrow. Want me to leave something playing on the laptop for you?”

“This is by far the strangest captivity ever,” Carmilla remarked as Laura pulled up LaFontaine’s Netflix account on the borrowed laptop. The girl selected the first series that was suggested and Carmilla didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was The Vampire Diaries.

As the show started, Laura could feel Carmilla’s eyes searching, examining her closely. It was making her blush and feel self conscious. The sooner she could end this miserable situation, the better.

* * *

  
_[A few days later]_

The camera was off. It would be for at least the next thirty minutes or so as Laura uploaded the latest video. Used to uploading it alone or with Danny in tow, the small dorm room was more crowded than it usually was when she completed this task. Perry and LaFontaine were perched on Laura’s bed focused on their schoolwork, apparently still not entirely comfortable with leaving her alone with a vampire for prolonged periods of time. Not that Laura blamed them or minded terribly. The biology major chewed thoughtfully on a pencil while the floor don engrossed herself in several printed out color coordinated spread sheets in front of her. Carmilla sprawled across her own bed lost in a book Laura was pretty sure wasn’t on any of Carmilla’s course reading lists, but considering it hardly seemed to mattered. Knowing the speed and voracity with which her roommate consumed books, it was probably a safe assumption that she had already finished every required reading list at Silas that held any interest long ago. Which also brought up the question: what did Carmilla do when she wasn't attending Silas?

Laura squinted her eyes, arching her back and letting out a groan. The bite mark throbbed slightly, a reminder of the reality of her current situation. She had never fully realized how much she moved her neck until recently. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t concentrate. My brain is literally melting and dripping out of my ear.”

“Well don’t distract everyone else,” Perry chided over her quickly moving highlighter.

“Scientifically speaking, it’s good to take a five to ten minute break every hour while studying,” LaFontaine looked up, choosing for the moment to ignore the all too realistic plausibility of brains melting for real at least twice more across campus before the semester was out. “It might do us all some good to take a quick break.”

“I know what we can do,” Laura beamed, quickly typing into her computer and pulling up a new window on her browser. “Horoscopes!”

“You know there is no scientific proof that those aren’t absolute bullshit, right?” LaFontaine rolled their eyes.

“I kind of like them,” Perry shrugged, placing her color coding devices down.

“Really? The Queen of Miss Normal likes horoscopes?” Carmilla commented from behind her book, seemingly toying with the idea of participating with the rest of the room.

Perry only shrugged. “They’re harmless fun.”

Carmilla rolled her eyes and returned her full attention to the book before her.

“Considering the list of all the things at Silas that…” Laura shrugged, giving up. She was starting to know better than try to point out the gaping holes in Perry’s reality. “C’mon, what’s everyone’s sign?”

Slowly they went around the room. Perry horoscope’s cautioned her to appreciate her friends. LaFontaine’s essentially advised that while it was good to kick back and relax, the party had to end at some point. Laura outwardly marveled at the vague one size fits all nature of horoscopes after being told that things weren’t always what they seemed. Swiveling her chair to face her roommate, she found the vampire still studiously ignoring the rest of the room.

“Carmilla. Your turn. What’s your sign?”

Carmilla looked up from her book, seemingly slightly taken aback about actually being included, but said nothing.

“July 10th,” Perry interjected after it appeared Carmilla had no intention of speaking. When LaFontaine and Laura both shot her surprised looks, Perry explained, “As the Floor Don, I have a spreadsheet of everyone’s birthdays.”

“I think you’d have a spreadsheet regardless,” LaFontaine smiled warmly. The entire room missed Carmilla roll her eyes yet again.

“Okay, so that means you’re… a cancer.” Laura squinted at the screen before her.

“Makes sense. Cancers are moody, which, you know, fits. But also sensitive, intuitive, very protective of those they care about—“ Perry started to list off the main characteristics she could remember, counting them off on her fingers.

“No offense Carmilla, but is that even your birthday?” LaFontaine interrupted, not hiding the doubt on their face. “I mean, obviously the year is wrong in the very least.”

“Well, birthdays are a rather modern invention,” Carmilla shrugged. “Eleventh or twelfth century, I believe.”

“You were born in like the 1600s,” LaFontaine pressed, unamused.

“It was so long ago, I honestly don’t remember.” The vampire spoke nonchalantly as if trying to recall a pen she had misplaced years ago. “As far as I know, my Mother just writes a random date on the form every time she enrolls me in this school.” When the room remained silent with eyes still locked on her, Carmilla continued in an attempt to placate them, to wipe away the strange looks laced with both pity and confusion. “Look, I can see how people might care about them, you know, when they come in a fairly limited supply. It’s just different when you’re a vampire.”

Laura continued to regard Carmilla strangely, frowning slightly. “Don’t you find that kind of sad, not having a birthday anymore?” Not for the first time, Laura found herself truly trying to understand her roommate and grapple with what it actually meant to be a vampire.

“Well, if I ever actually graduate college, we can celebrate that, cupcake, how does that sound?” Carmilla sighed, rolling her eye for good measure. “I had eighteen birthdays as a human and then it stopped being important. It happens. Everything loses its magic eventually.”

And even that, the idea of Carmilla having attended college every twenty years, probably taking the same classes, writing the same papers and never earning a diploma made Laura rather sad for the woman. Alive for centuries and Carmilla would never have a chance or opportunity to use a college degree even if she ever got one. Being a vampire was more than just blood, strength, and speed. Unlike everyone else in the room, Carmilla did not have a future to hope for. At least not in the traditional sense. Was there change or progress, anything new to actually look forward to? Or was it just centuries with the same thing essentially on repeat?

Not for the first time since starting to truly get to know the other girl, Laura felt embarrassed and ashamed about how she had first greeted Carmilla. Granted, the woman should have knocked and she had a raging bad attitude from the start. However Laura never gave her the opportunity to be anything but the worst roommate ever. When the truth came down it, between the initial greeting of “who the hell are you” and tying Carmilla to a chair for close to two weeks, Laura herself was a much stronger candidate for worst roommate ever. Not that she would ever admit it out loud.

Especially as Carmilla seemed to forgive her for all of it, give or take that small bite to the neck. She had even promised to stay to protect her from the Dean’s vampiric cult. Laura knew that she should have been scared living with her but in truth all Laura felt was safe. Among other things.

Laura couldn’t help the way she looked at Carmilla whenever the woman left the shower, towel clinging to her damp body as she lazily picked out an outfit. Laura tried to look away, but her eyes always roamed back. If it was merely physical attraction, Laura felt no one would begrudge her that. Anyone would have a hard time denying how attractive her roommate was, vampire or not. But it was more than that. Laura wanted to know what was the other woman thinking and feeling. Where did she go at night? What did Carmilla dream of while she slept in all morning? When had she fallen in love with reading and why: had she always devoured books or was it a way to pass the time, a coping mechanism for longevity?  Laura wanted to know if Carmilla’s obsession for her yellow pillow was because she actually liked Laura like she had claimed that one time or because Laura’s pillow was simply more comfortable. (Once when Carmilla was out, Laura had compared their pillows. It caused her heart to sink slightly. Her pillow really was more comfortable.)

* * *

  
“Sorry if bringing up birthdays was a sore subject,” Laura broke the silence that had enveloped the room after Perry and LaFontaine had finally left.  
The past couple hours had felt almost normal. For that short while, it like there were no missing girls or vampire conspiracy. They were only a couple of college students doing homework and secretly pondering crushes. For a few hours, it felt like Laura had always imagined college was supposed to feel like.

But things weren’t normal. The girls were still missing and her roommate, who had just poured herself a tall refreshing glass of blood, was most definitely a vampire.

“When are you one to apologize?” Carmilla lazily looked up from her book, before once again shifting positions to look at Laura a bit more clearly. “Seriously. Don’t worry about it.”

“What’s it like?” Laura pressed.

“To stop caring about birthdays?” Her eyebrow arched curiously.

“No. To be a vampire.”

“Is that thing on?” Eyes narrowing, Carmilla gestured with her head towards the camera.

Laura shook her head. “It’s not. I promise.”

“It better not be.” Carmilla’s attention lingered on the camera. However, the tell tale light wasn’t blinking.

“So… what’s it like?”

“Your interrogation technique still leaves something to be desired.” Carmilla slipped the bookmark into her book, granting Laura her full attention. She sat up fully. “What do you want to know?”

Laura shrugged, “I don’t know. I guess… I guess I just want to know you better.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. To me, it’s normal. Things that I think I remember being important as a human just sort of lost meaning, you know? Everything starts to fade after awhile. It’s like saying the same word over and over and over again.”

“Except that it’s bigger than that,” Laura continued, not accepting Carmilla’s response at all.

“Is it?” In those two words, the vampire sounded so exhausted. “I was only human for eighteen years, Laura. I’ve been a vampire for centuries. I’m hardly the best source for comparison at this point.”

Neither spoke for a while. Carmilla, afraid she had said too much or said the wrong thing, toyed with the idea of picking her book back up or even getting up and leaving the room altogether.

“I guess I can understand that a little,” Laura spoke after several moments of silent and pained contemplation. “I mean, it’s kind of the same with my Mom. She died so long ago. It’s just bits and pieces now. It’s hard to tell what’s actually a memory and what I made up based off of photographs and what people tell me, you know? It’s like I’m supposed to miss her, and I do, but I don’t always know what I’m missing anymore. Sometimes I wonder if I…” She kept her eyes cast downward as she spoke, not daring to glance up at the other girl. Slowly, Laura’s eyes got braver. When her eyes finally traveled all the way to meet Carmilla’s, the vampire was smiling at her sadly, knowingly.

“Yeah. I imagine it’s something like that.” Carmilla swallowed, her voice soft, slightly taken aback.

* * *

 

The night LaFontaine disappeared, Laura curled up in Carmilla’s bed. Wrapped up in the strange blankets, Laura felt enveloped in the smell of Carmilla. She inhaled deeply, smiling softly to herself in the darkness as she tried not to think of how long the sheets had gone without being washed. Or how often Carmilla fell asleep with her boots still on. She could just make out Carmilla’s shadowy figure curled up on the floor below.

“Are you sure you don’t want a blanket?” Laura whispered, too afraid to say out loud to the words she truly wanted to ask. “Or a pillow?”

“Don’t worry yourself,” Carmilla responded after a moment.

“Are you sure?” Laura wasn’t quite ready to let it go. If Carmilla would only say she wasn’t fine, then Laura might be able to find a way to say ‘why don’t we share the bed.’

“Vampiric constitution, sweet cheeks.”

“Because if…” She could still feel the way Carmilla’s thumb stroked her hand when they waltzed for that brief moment. Laura wanted to feel it again.

“Good night, Laura,” Carmilla replied, taking away what little courage Laura was mustering up.

“Good night, Carmilla,” Laura exhaled, defeated. Maybe it was for the best.

It took Laura until the next morning for her to realize that they had never wished each other good night before.

* * *

  
_[Present day]_

The light was blinding as Laura slowly cracked opened her eyes. It felt as if she was waking from the most beautiful dream, a dream that she remembered nothing of but the certainty of its divine rightness. As her eyes struggled against the brightness of the world, she felt the overwhelming sense of ‘this is how it should be’ receding, shrinking and moving away from her grasp so quickly. Too quickly. All she knew was that at some point she had been there, wherever or whatever there was, and now she could never go back again. Whatever it was in that dream, she had lost it forever. All that was left behind was a dull sense of panic and loss.

And with this also came the realization that it was not as it had been before. Now, torn abruptly and violently from this rightness, everything felt wrong, slightly off, and misfitting. The world somehow was no longer how it should be. Now it was piercing in its blinding brightness. Louder with the faint rustle of clothing screaming in her ears. The smells, the sounds, everything was so much more than before. Except for the cold. That was dimmer, seeming to matter less, inconsequential. A small mercy.

“Laura… Laura, hey, you’re awake,” Carmilla smiled softly, sadly above the din of the world. “You’re ok.”

“Am I?” Laura heard herself whisper. Everything in her body felt heavy and strange. Her muscles seemed to tingle and pulse with electricity while at the same time held down by some invisible, slowly receding force. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember how she came to be lying down with her head resting on Carmilla’s lap. Had she fallen asleep? Why was her head throbbing incessantly?

Carmilla bit her lip, looking off to her right. Following her gaze, Laura found Perry leaning against a tree. LaFontaine, looking rather pale, was resting up against her. Laura slowly became aware that no one seemed to be looking at her, not really. When she tried, no one would meet her eye. In fact, no one would look at each other. She could practically smell the shame and discomfort.

However most of her attention was drawn to the makeshift bandage on LaFontaine’s left forearm. Instinctively she knew it was a fresh wound. She didn’t remember LaFontaine injured let alone how. Judging from the cut, it couldn’t have been too long ago. It was still so fresh that Laura could smell the blood as it coagulated. Laura licked her dry lips. It made her realize how hungry she was.

It was the intensity of this hunger that first clearly signaled that something was gravely wrong. Only then did she realize that she should not be able to smell blood like this, especially not from that distance.

“Carmilla…” Laura suddenly struggled to speak. Words felt chalky in her dry mouth. Anything else she had wanted to say suddenly seemed to be either stuck in her throat or caught in her teeth.

It all came back to her. Her stumbling over what, a root, a rock, an unseen hole? She couldn’t be sure. The fall, or at least the start of one that she could recall. There was a flash of overwhelming pain in the back of head. It was unlike anything she had felt before. The surreal realization that after everything this was how she was going to die. Then the nothingness. The blankness, the rightness of whatever it was, of whatever she was taken away from and wherever she would never return to.

It all came together, it made sense now. She knew what happened. She knew what she was.

Her eyes searched Carmilla, pleading with her, daring her to say it, compelling her to be the one to say it out loud first. To give this a name, to anchor this new unwanted existence in reality and take responsibility.

This was all Carmilla’s fault. This was not what she wanted. She had to be the one to say it first, not Laura.

“Laura, I’m so sorry. There was… there was nothing else I could do.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was an unspoken understanding that they had all come to a decision that was, at best, unforgivable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence."  
> — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

It had been days since the diner. They barely had been able to grab anything resembling food or supplies as they raced to put as much space between them and the angry mob’s second wave. After crossing enough distance to feel somewhat safe, it became laughable the items they had grabbed in panic and held onto during their mad dash back into the mountains. A broom, a rolling pin, a few dull butter knives, and the remains of some crumbling cookies that in all likelihood were either cursed or haunted - an assortment that would do little to keep them alive. The broom, at least, was a half decent walking stick and, along with the rolling pin, flammable if necessary. Maybe the Bobsy Twins weren’t entirely useless.

Still not entirely assured of their safety, they clung to the edges, following the stream and sources of water the best they could. The idea, the hope being that the water would lead them to a less pitchfork happy civilization. But as simple as ‘follow the water’ sounded, without proper hiking gear or supplies the four travelers made slow progress. The lack of map meant there was the ever growing seed of doubt that they were walking in the wrong direction.

It had been days of looking over their shoulders and LaFontaine’s sporadic successes at building camp fires. Apparently, rolling pins were not as flammable as they originally assumed. On the days where LaFontaine could repeat past successes and build a fire, Carmilla would slink off to try to supplement their malnourished diets. Perry would always ignore the fact that every dead animal that was unceremoniously dropped at her feet would be entirely drained of blood. Though perhaps Perry simply didn’t realize how bloody carcasses really were. It was hard to know what these human children knew and what they didn’t.

Carmilla did not mind the nights so much. She preferred them. Unlike her companions, the cold was a sensation she felt, but was not something she was ultimately bothered by. Laura, searching for warmth and comfort, would burrow deep into the vampire. Never one to be tender before, Carmilla found reason to be with her and often nuzzled her nose into Laura’s back. Night by night on the cold hard ground amongst rocks and roots, Carmilla re-learned how to mold her body against another.

It was not the ideal situation by any means, but every morning they all woke up. Perhaps a little thinner than they were the day before, a little more ragged and dirty to be sure, but alive. And always hopefully a day closer to civilization, to salvation. To whatever was supposed to happen next.

The others had parents and family to call, to pick them up, and to return them to their regularly scheduled lives. But Carmilla? She would never admit it out loud: reluctantly she silently grieved the loss of her Mother and Will. Well, at least her Mother. It was true that in many ways Carmilla was now free. However, it did not mean that she felt liberated. So much of her life she had lived alongside, then held captive by, and finally lived in opposition to her Mother that Carmilla didn’t know how else to define her life. Or what exactly she was feeling about this sudden, often dreamed about change. The next centuries would be as equally defined by the absence of her Mother as the last ones had been defined by her presence. The vampire longed to get out of the woods as much as the other three, but escape the woods to what? What could possibly be out there for her? Laura, as much as Carmilla cared for the human, was only a short term solution at best.

It was not yet quite a week in the woods, Carmilla silently twisting and turning about her future, when they spotted several columns of smoke rising up to the heavens from the other side of the valley. The first real sign of civilization since the diner. It was Perry who saw it first. From where they were standing, they didn’t look more than a couple of miles away at best.

It finally felt like they had a concrete reason to hope again. Even Carmilla couldn’t help but smile as they all picked up their pace. But to their pure human jubilation, she only felt bitter sweet. The world, obscured by blanket of snow, suddenly became a beautiful place again. Laura even half-danced, half-skipped along the mountain’s edge, joyous at the prospect of finally seeing her dad again.

Laura was elated right up until the point where she suddenly disappeared down the steep bank. It all happened so quickly. It was hard to tell if she had tripped, slipped, or had simply misjudged the edge entirely. No one, not even Laura, knew what was happening until it was too late. She never even had a chance to scream.

Maybe that meant it didn’t hurt.

Carmilla would never forget how Laura’s face instantly turned from a happy, carefree smile into one of total utter shock and surprise.

In a blind panic, Carmilla raced down the ledge after Laura’s small, silent, tumbling rag doll of a body. Swearing violently, she struggled against the steep slippery slope before succumbing and crashing down herself. Even before the small tree abruptly halted her own violent descent, Carmilla knew that any and all hope was misplaced. She pulled herself up only to collapse helplessly front of Laura.

Laura’s eyes were locked on the tree tops and the gray sky above, but Carmilla doubted she was actually seeing any of what was before her. Her body, frail and delicate, was cut in several places but she wasn’t bleeding quite like she should.

When LaFontaine and Perry joined her at the bottom they both demanded Carmilla to do something. As if she could once again be the savior in this piece. With her knees cushioned by the wet snow, the vampire appeasingly bent over Laura’s body. More for show than anything else, she held her ear above Laura’s still mouth to listen and feel for a breath that she knew would not come. Carmilla reached out and failed to find a pulse that wasn’t there. Instead of a heart beat, she only felt the final shreds of hope slip away. The aspiring journalist, her roommate, the girl she loved was still warm, but in the cold mountain air her unnaturally still body was already cooling to the touch.

“It’s too late.”

“What do you mean it’s too late?” Perry protested, catching LaFontaine they crumpled every so slightly against their best friend.

“It’s too late.” In that moment, Carmilla lacked any ability to do anything but repeat herself in the face of Perry’s naive stubbornness. There was no other way to convey what she could barely admit to herself. So she borrowed the same words, the same inflection, the same everything. Only it sounded more hollow and less real the second time she said it.

“Well I don’t accept that!” Perry shouted.

“It’s not really your choice here, sweetheart,” Carmilla snarled as she finally turned around to face the other two. Her heart instantly jealous as the two held each other for support. “There’s nothing we can do.”

“This is not how this happens. It’s not just out of the blue, one minute you’re alive and the next-…” Perry’s arms gestured pointlessly into the nothingness of the mountain air as if such motions could raise the dead. As if her arms could raise Laura and end what was so clearly a horrible joke gone too far. “You have to check again. You’re not doing it right. She was walking not even two minutes ago. She was practically dancing! This isn’t how it’s supposed to happen.”

“That’s exactly how it happens. This is exactly how it always happens. Every damn time. People die.” Carmilla had no patience for this very human form of denial. It was inevitable, the one thing one could truly count on and yet it was the hardest thing for them to grasp, understand and accept. Even she would hopefully, eventually die some day. “They die.”

“That’s not how it happened with you. And there is something we can do.” LaFontaine’s calmly placed words raised the hairs on the back of Carmilla’s neck in anticipation of what came next. “Something you can do.”

Carmilla wanted to pretend like she didn’t hear LaFontaine's words. She wanted LaFontaine to take a moment to realize what they were truly implying. But no such realization came nor would it come until it was possibly too late. It was left for Carmilla to speak in slow, deliberate words. “You can’t seriously be asking me to do what I think you’re asking me to do.”

“It’s the only chance we have to save her,” LaFontaine insisted like only the innocent could do.

“That’s not how it works. You don’t save someone by turning them into a vampire!” Her words hung in the air, catching hold of every crevice in their minds and hearts. The thought, the hope now put into the world had a life of it’s own and it would not give up quite so easily.

“You can’t seriously be saying that,” LaFontaine continued, her hands gesturing manically. “Are you seriously just going to give up now? You can bring her back!”

“You don’t understand, that’s not how it works. I can’t bring her back. She’s dead.” Saying the words out loud felt like a visceral punch in the gut. Why were they always so convinced that a vampire could be a hero? “She will always be dead, no matter what I do.”

“You seem fairly alive for a dead person,” LaFontaine observed dryly.

“Yeah, after a fashion. But I’m not Mircalla, I’m not… human. I’m not who I was. I haven’t been since I died. Don’t you get that? The Laura we know is dead. She will always be dead. Even if I were to… even if I could…” Carmilla shook her head, barely able to get the words out. “You don’t understand. She wouldn’t come back the same Laura as before. She’d be different and she’d only continue to change.” Carmilla swallowed. “And I honestly doubt she’d ever forgive us.”

“We can’t just not do anything!” Perry shook her head as if to shake away Carmilla’s reasoning, tears already starting to stream down her eyes. Distantly, Carmilla wondered if that extra exposure to cold from tears was healthy or wise. It was true, she didn’t miss being human. The frailty seemed maddening to her now. “You can’t… you can’t be telling me that my friend is dead. I refuse to accept that. I refuse to have it end like this. What are we going to do, bury her in these godforsaken mountains and cover her body with stones so that the wolves don’t rip her body to shreds? I won’t, I can’t accept that! I can’t!”

“We saw the smoke. It is probably, hopefully a town. I could carry her to… we could…” Carmilla gestured weakly behind her, her arguments already starting to melt away. “Look, you don’t bring people back from the dead. It’s never what you expect, you never quite get what you ask for.”

“But we can try and I think we have pretty strong chances with you here with us,” LaFontaine asserted. “We can’t just leave her there like this, let her truly be dead when…”

“When we could curse her soul for all eternity?” Carmilla spat out the words incredulously. “Look, I don’t know what you imagine being a vampire is like, but it isn’t some blessing. Humans die. That’s how it’s supposed to work. You die for a reason, trust me, it’s better that way. You have to accept that, not just for Laura’s sake but for yourselves. Disrupting the natural order of things, it comes with consequences and a very steep price. Trust me, I’ve paid it. I’m still paying it. I have lived centuries under my Mother. I’ve seen what can happen to people when they’re turned.”

“But she’s gone now. Laura is safe from all that.”

“Safe is a relative term, don’t you think, when we’re standing over her body arguing about whether to resurrect her as a vampire or not,” Carmilla growled. “You’re both children. You understand nothing. Ignoring everything else, Laura would never age a day. She’d have to watch everyone she knows and loves die one by one. It’s a curse worse than you can imagine.”

“How is that any worse than her father burying his only child next to his dead wife?” LaFontaine protested. “At least he wouldn’t be the sole surviving member of his family.”

“He already is the sole survivor, don’t you get it? He just doesn’t know it yet. Look, we can’t just decide to turn Laura into a monster. This is not for us to decide.” Carmilla fought to stand her ground, but if she was honest, she was not entirely sure how firmly she herself stood on it. The thought of having Laura back, in any form....

“If she could make this decision herself, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.” LaFontaine refused to give an inch. “We have to do something. This is our only something.”

Carmilla bent back down in front of Laura. Slowly, she reached out, wiping a few strands of hair out of the younger girl’s eyes. She remembered the nights curled up in the campfire, Laura’s unending optimism right up until stumbling down the ravine. She feared Laura would never forgive her and that doing this would ruin who Laura truly was at her core. Carmilla knew with almost every fiber of her being that Laura would not want this. She would not ask for this.

But could she accept it? Should she?

“I don’t even know if I can do it,” Carmilla spoke softly. “I swore to myself long ago I never would bring another soul into this hell.”

“Time’s change,” LaFontaine observed coldly.

“While I’m sure that’s nice in theory, Laura’s dead and you need to bring her back.” Perry’s world was so strictly black and white, at times Carmilla was almost envious. She missed when the world had been so simple, so cut and dry.

“Look, if you can’t do it, then we’ll… learn to accept it. But we can’t not try, ok? We can’t give up on Laura. She wouldn’t give up on us.” LaFontaine softened.

“I’m not sure deciding to turn someone into a vampire would really fall under the heading of not giving up on them,” Carmilla sighed but finally relented to what was probably inevitable. “Look, if I do this… I can’t make any promises. Like I said, I’ve never done this before. Even if it works Laura, if she’s Laura, might never forgive any of us.”

Once Carmilla seemed to consent, both Perry and LaFontaine merely nodded. As if surprised they even convinced her, as if suddenly realizing for the first time that Laura was actually dead and that this is what they as a group had decided to do. There was an unspoken understanding that they had all come to a decision that was, at best, unforgivable.

“I need one of you to…” Carmilla closed her eyes, willing herself to commit this atrocity for purely selfish reasons. “I’m going to need human blood to finish the ritual. My blood is already tainted, it will only get us so far. She will need both… she needs both now.”

“How much blood?” Perry inquired, for the first time displaying the smallest flicker of hesitancy.

“Enough.” Carmilla sighed. “It certainly won’t kill you but this isn’t like that Twilight crap. Dark magic always comes a price and your blood is only a down payment. This is going to hurt like hell. Literally.”

LaFontaine placed a hand in front of Perry and stepped forward. “Sounds hardcore.” Their face and voice might have read as determined, but Carmilla wondered what was really underneath. If LaFontaine had any sense, it should feel like they had just made a deal with the devil.

Carmilla smiled sadly, before pushing back her own sleeve. Her blood was needed to start it off. “Once I begin the ritual, I can’t stop for any reason. There is no turning back. Do you understand that?”

Both Perry and LaFontaine nodded solemnly.

“Now, are you sure, absolutely sure, that you want to do this?” Carmilla examined the two closely. If this truly was going to happen, she needed to know that they were all in this together.  

“The way I see it, we have no other choice,” LaFontaine asserted.

After centuries, Carmilla knew that there was always another choice. That didn’t always mean that there was a better choice. No matter what decision she made at this point, she knew she would probably never forgive herself. She couldn’t let Laura die, not like this, but she couldn’t rightfully resurrect her as a vampire either. But if either decision was unforgivable, then what would it matter if she went the selfish route?

She bit down on her left wrist, instinctually finding the veins with her fangs. The blood gushed forth before the pain surged down her wrist. She paused for the slightest moment to push away any lingering misgivings before dipping her finger into the fresh wound, wincing slightly. The ritual had officially begun.

Carmilla had never hated herself more as when she reached out to LaFontaine and uttered, “Your turn. Give me your arm.”

* * *

 

Carmilla crouched in front of brown and barren earth. Pausing for only a brief moment, she surveyed her efforts and found them lacking. There was so much more to go, so much more to do. She returned to digging, the parched soil easily giving way to her efforts. Each hole only lasted long enough for her to drop a few seeds inside before she quickly covered it back up again. It was with a great sense of urgency that she systematically created rows upon rows of small dirt mounds. Now if only they would grow.

But even the core of her knew that something was off.

“Where are the roses?” her Mother’s hard, judgmental voice cut across the silence of Carmilla’s desperate labor.

“They take a while to grow,” Carmilla heard the weakness in her voice as she willed herself to work faster. She tried to will the plants to grow faster. To grow at all. “I’m a vampire. We usually do these things in reverse.”

The slap across her face sent Carmilla back, flattening several of the more recent mounds. Stunned, she reached a hand up to her tender cheek before scurrying back to her duties. The roses, they had to be planted. There was no time to waste.

The Dean’s eyes flickered over to the considerably larger mound in the earth that Carmilla had been studiously avoiding. “Oh my foolish glittering girl, she’s not a rose. She won’t grow into one either.”

“They’re for her. I’m planting the roses for her,” Carmilla’s voice was soft, defeated as her hands continued their frantic if doomed mission. However, the futility of all, finally started to sink in. Carmilla’s hands began to slow.

“Not good enough.” As the Dean spoke, She melted away, leaving Laura behind in Her wake. Laura, while so much smaller in stature and softer in demeanor, only frightened Carmilla more. The girl’s eyes were locked on the her-sized mound before them, surrounded by the earth that Carmilla had lovingly disturbed in her name. The rose garden that would never grow.

“They’re for you. These roses I’m planting, they’re for you,” Carmilla offered, repeating what she had said moments before. Not sure what else to say, not sure how to ask for forgiveness.

“Where are they?” Laura’s voice was hollow, empty. “My roses, I don’t see them.” Her body flickered in and out, threatening to disappear completely.

“They need time to grow,” Carmilla explained sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”

Laura faded in and out, more gone than visible at this point. “I’ll never see them, will I, my roses? They’re not for me at all. They’re for you.”

“They’re for you. I swear. I promise. I’m trying,” Carmilla whispered. “Don’t go. I need you.” But as she spoke, the vampire became aware that nothing good would ever grow here.

“They’re not even roses.” Laura observed coldly. The small failed garden, the burial mound had all melted away to reveal the war torn landscape that Carmilla had emerged out of her coffin into decades ago. “They’ll never grow. You know that.”

* * *

  
Carmilla rubbed her eyes, pushing back the strange dream. It set her on edge but at least it was a reprieve from drowning in blood on a near nightly basis. She shifted slightly, her body stiff from falling asleep sitting up against a tree. Her exposed wound, which was healing considerably faster than poor LaFontaine’s, was a harsh reminder of the even stranger reality they now all found themselves in. The vampire had no idea if the ritual had worked, but her dream gave her a strange impression that perhaps it had. With that premonition came the accompanying dread of success. Laura’s head rested heavily, lifelessly on her lap and Carmilla stroked Laura’s hair lovingly, not quite sure if she was touching a corpse or a soon to be reborn vampire. Not even knowing which was the preferred option.

LaFontaine and Perry woke soon after. LaFontaine, who had lost a considerable of blood the day before, looked pale and weak. Haggard, more so than the rest of them. Perry puttered around her friend, continually eyeing Laura’s body uneasily. The morning after the ritual held a grimness, a shamefulness that they had yet to grow into. Their decision and the anticipation of its consequences weighed heavily on their collective and singular consciences. Now that the deed was done and they were left only to wait, no one could quite determine what the desired outcome actually was.

“Is she…?” LaFontaine finally broke the uncomfortable silence.

“We’ll know soon enough.” Carmilla shrugged uncomfortably. Either way, she doubted anyone would be truly happy with the result.

Shortly after Perry gave up trying to build a fire and the threesome fell victim to the strange sense of needing to do something but having nothing to do, Laura’s eyes open. It happened so slowly at first that Carmilla thought she was imagining it. The sun, blindly bright to vampires, must have felt more so to one just waking up from the dead.

“Laura… Laura, hey, you’re awake,” Carmilla smiled softly, sadly. “You’re ok.”

“Am I?” Laura whispered, her voice hoarse as if it had been drug through the underworld itself. Her eyes slowly moved around, opening and closing, struggling with the brightness of it all. “What happened?”

Carmilla bit her lip, her eyes falling to Perry and LaFontaine. Surely they wouldn’t leave the full explanation up to her. But the two remained silent, stunned, eyes averted. Ashamed. Carmilla’s eyes followed Laura’s, sensing that for the first time Laura was smelling what had been taunting Carmilla all night: the fresh scent of LaFontaine’s blood. Only, for Laura, it was so much more so.

She watched the realization, the horror slowly develop across the young vampire’s face.

“Carmilla…”

“Laura, I’m so sorry. There was… there was nothing else I could do.”

“I died, didn’t I?” Laura spoke slowly, trying to sit up, shaking slightly. The detached horror settled in on Laura’s face, her voice sifting from confusion to accusatory. “I died. But I’m not dead.”

“Don’t try to move too quickly,” Carmilla suggested, resting a hand hopefully soothingly on the girl’s shoulder, unable at that moment to answer the question.

“Why? Because I was dead?” Laura shouted, the rage bubbling up as she knocked Carmilla’s hand away. In that moment, Laura paused, stunned by her own actions. “You did this. You did this to me.”

Vampirism was not a gift that was lovingly or tenderly thrust upon a human body. The transition is always jarring, painful, and often quite literally maddening. In a strange way, every sense, every muscle was so much more alive and stronger than before. Even the gentlest whisper or the subtlest scent could now be overpowering.

And then there was the rage.

Carmilla remembered very little about being human. What she did remember was the raw strength of her emotions when she had first been turned. This was matched perhaps only by the awe of her new physical strength. It was an experience that was both intoxicating and terrifying.

“You did this to me…” Laura whispered as she stood up on trembling legs. “I’m a monster now.” For a moment it was too fast, the blood rushed to her head. Carmilla jumped up to steady her, reaching out only to have her arm once again knocked away. The strength, the violence of the action was startling to Carmilla.

“Don’t touch me,” Laura growled. “You’ve done enough already.”

For the second time since knowing Carmilla, Laura felt consumed with an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. Once again her own body, her own fate was entirely out of her control. Helpless. No one trusted her to make decisions, to take care of herself, to know any better. No one trusted little old Laura to die and stay dead. Not able to grieve her, they had selfishly forced her to come back as a monster against her will.

She had not wanted this. She had not wanted any of this.

The powerlessness soon shifted to rage. Only this time it was a purer, more powerful form. The kind only a demon could feel, the kind where Laura felt she could—and should—raze villages. It was both sickening and intoxicating to realize that she most likely could do just that.

Laura was a monster now. That very fact alone enraged her enough to live up to her new identity.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then."  
> —  
> Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland 
> 
>  
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: Some violence, vomiting and other angst as Laura grapples with having lack of agency.

It had been over an hour. The sting of the humiliation hadn’t yet begun to subside. Hell hath no fury like a Summer Society woman scorned. Showered, hair washed and declared to be completely tomato seed free after a thorough inspection by Perry, Laura could still feel the phantom sensation of the fruit splitting apart across her skull. Not to mention the throbbing headache that persistently lingered from the poisoned necklace. What kind of poison did vampires use anyway? Were there any lasting affects she should be worried about? Carmilla hadn’t said. At least the ice pack helped somewhat.  
  
In the background LaFontaine was still hogtied on Laura’s bed, mumbling vacantly while insisting on going to the party and only further underscoring the gravity of the current situation. How much longer until Carmilla would return?    
  
Laura switched on her camera. Not sure how to otherwise wait helplessly for Carmilla’s hopefully victorious return with the sword, she needed a distraction. Even better if it gave her some semblance of control, a platform to process all that was happening around her. Calmly describing the last few hours might distract her from the growing pit of worry that was threatening to consume her.  
  
They had no idea where the sacrifice was going to take place. Absentmindedly Laura also wondered what the sleeping arrangements would be if Perry or LaFontaine stayed the night again. Maybe this time Carmilla wouldn’t choose the floor. Laura thought she might like that. Maybe this time she would even suggest that they share the bed. Maybe.  
   
It was with this soft hope that Laura began to speak, rattling off her thoughts and fears but she was forced to stop before she reached any sense of catharsis. The video cache was full.  
  
Normally overly careful and quite particular about clearing the cache after each upload, Laura went back to see what she had somehow forgotten to delete. And there it was.  
  
Surreal, indescribable horror.  
  
She watched her own body move across the frame, her voice recite words but none of it was her. It wasn’t her at all. But, horrifyingly enough, it was her. But how? She had been rendered an empty shell, an easily accessible puppet with her own inner being easily tossed aside. Where had she gone when the Dean wore her skin like Laura was a simple second hand outfit without any difficult zippers or troubling buttons?  
  
She could barely understand what she was seeing or decipher the words she was hearing her own voice speak. All she knew was that for some time her body was not her own. That Carmilla had made a secret deal that sent Kirsch to his death or worse. That Carmilla had lied. For some reason that felt like the worst blow of all. Sickened and horrified, Laura lost the thread of where it seemed like Carmilla loved her or at least cared for her. She clung only to how the Dean referred to her as Carmilla’s pet and the way Carmilla said deal.  
  
Until this point she had always assumed that ‘breaking out into a cold sweat’ was a figure of speech and not a literal sensation. However like with so many other things recently, she was now realizing how horribly wrong she was. Her body glistened with sweat, shivering even as she felt like she was burning up.  Repulsion rose up from her stomach like a leviathan. She had never felt so dirty, so thoroughly sickened, so disgustingly weak and helpless in her entire life. Violated was only the prologue.  
  
Laura lingered long enough to watch herself return to her own body before bolting towards the bathroom. She knew what came next, part of her wished she never knew what actually came before.  
  
She had been possessed by Carmilla’s mother. There were no memory of it whatsoever. No assurance that this was even the first time it had happened. No comfort that it might not happen again. Had the Dean and Carmilla communicated through her this entire time? Had it all been a trick, some intricate betrayal? What if some trace of the Dean still lingered hidden deep within her ligaments? Was some vampiric trace sewn into her spinal cord? Did Carmilla mean a single word she said?  
  
Curled over the toilet, bracing herself against the sink and wall for support, her body desperately tried to cleanse and purge itself of whatever traces of the Dean that could still be found within her system. If she closed her eyes, Laura could still clearly see the way the Dean moved about and manipulated her body. It was sinister, disorientating, and thoroughly nauseating. What was Laura to them? A body, a skin, a worthless mass of bone and muscle to move about and use as someone saw fit. A silly mortal. A child. Laura was someone not worth telling the truth to: “It was… it was poisoned.” Lies. Silly little Laura couldn’t handle the truth.  
  
And, who knows, maybe she couldn’t. That didn’t mean it didn’t cut her to the core. Laura felt poisoned, now more so than ever.  
  
At one point, Perry appeared in the bathroom, silently holding back Laura’s hair while Laura emptied her entire body inside out beyond recognition. When there was nothing left, not even the thinnest traces of stomach bile, still Perry was silent. And Laura was grateful to her for that. There was nothing to say.  
  
Eventually, Laura stood up, aware of how much her body shook and trembled. Aware of how dirty and foul her skin felt. Her own body repulsed her. Wordlessly, she motioned to the shower. Perry nodded, walked out and closed the door softly behind her.  
  
Curled up on the shower floor under the steady downpour of hot water, Laura watched the steam rise up as if from afar. As if she had never fully returned to her own body and she was only becoming aware of it now. No matter how raw she scrubbed her own skin, the ablutions would always be insufficient. The water would never be purifying enough. Laura wasn’t sure how to reclaim fully, or even partially, what the Dean had so casually, callously taken over before discarding. She wasn’t sure how to move, barely finding the strength or the voice to utter “I’m fine” and “Leave me be” and “In a minute” when Perry started to periodically knock quietly on the bathroom door.  
  
Her head still throbbed as her mind tried to reclaim itself, tried to knock out all of the kinks that the Dean had left behind in Her wake. Her bright pink skin stung from overzealous attempts at cleansing. Every inch of her body hurt like hell and yet none of it felt like her anymore. Laura wondered if it ever would. What did she even feel like before? How would she know if she ever finally got back there?  
  
When Laura finally rose from the bathroom floor, the water long gone cold, all she had left to hold herself together was her anger. She might never feel safe or in control ever again, but at least with her fury she didn’t feel quite so powerless.  
  
Carmilla had promised to protect her. Carmilla had lied. She had let this happen to her, to Betty, to Sarah Jane and Natalie, to Elsie, to Kirsch, and to LaFontaine. To all of them. Carmilla was a coward who wasn’t coming back with the sword. She had lied about that as well. She had lied about it all.  
  
There was no hope. No desperate chance for victory. No possibility of saving anyone. Just a useless vampire who couldn’t or wouldn’t care. Carmilla had watched the Dean possess her body and did nothing. Who said nothing but lies.  
  
Laura’s rage at Carmilla held her together as she dressed herself carefully. Silently, she returned to her chair, queued up the video, and waited for the vampire to return.

* * *

  
_[Present Day]_

Propelled by her blinding rage, Laura tore across the woods with a speed and power that she had never experienced before even in her wildest dreams. As she raced deeper into the woods, she felt her human weaknesses and even her own death shake loose and fall away. Part of her longed to be able to bend down, to scoop it back up, and to lock it away somewhere safe but she knew none of that was possible. Already it was becoming confusing to her. How she had withstood being a frail human for so long? It felt like she was losing her humanity by the minute and it sickened her.  
  
How long had she been dead?  
  
How long before Carmilla had decided that she was too cowardly to grieve?  
  
Laura sensed that Carmilla was not far behind. At first, Laura thought she was somehow faster, that Carmilla couldn’t catch up. But the further she raced, the more she realized that Carmilla was only giving her space. This made Laura feel more claustrophobic. Laura wanted to run until she felt so exhausted she collapsed. After effortlessly crossing what seemed to be miles of the mountain’s terrain, she realized she wasn’t feeling the slightest sign of tiredness. Apparently vampires couldn’t collapse from exhaustion so easily. Temper tantrums and dramatic exits would have to be revised.  
  
She slowed her pace down to a jog and then a fast walk before finally coming to a complete stop. With her back turned, she waited impatiently for Carmilla to catch up to her.  
  
“What were you thinking?” Laura shouted as Carmilla cautiously entered Laura’s peripheral vision. The older woman’s hands were up, already calling truce.  
  
Carmilla, arms still raised, stopped. Laura turned slightly so she could look at Carmilla directly when she tried to explain herself. But Carmilla said nothing, her eyes averted to the ground.  
  
Laura motioned to herself, sickened. “You could have let me stay dead and not turn me into this… this monster.”

Laura hit a nearby tree in frustration. The snow was knocked loose from where it was perched on the branches, covering the young vampire in a white dusting. If Laura was not visibly trembling from anger, it would have been cute the way she half shook, half wiped the snow off her small body. As it was, Carmilla knew better than to visibly smile. Not to mention how much it hurt to hear Laura’s words. A monster.  
  
“We had no right to make that decision, but we couldn’t lose you.” Carmilla took a step forward, trying to cross the vast distance between them. Laura immediately took a larger step back. “We loved you too much to lose you.”  
  
“And this is what you do to the people you loved? Poor, dead Laura, lets make her a vampire. And loved? _Loved?_ Past tense, like my beating heart?” Laura spat viciously. “Seriously? You turned me into a vampire. An honest to god vampire. Who could love a demon?”  
  
“I’m the exact same demon, Laura.” Carmilla tried to ignore Laura’s words. She was angry, she was lashing out. She struck at the core of Carmilla’s insecurities. _No one could love a demon._ “And I love you.” Carmilla took another step forward, Laura didn’t step back.  
  
“Well maybe I didn’t want to be a vampire! Maybe I wanted to stay dead.” Laura caught Carmilla off guard as she launched herself fully at Carmilla. She braced herself, but while Laura’s fists fell against her chest rhythmically it became very clear that Laura had no intention of actually trying to hurt Carmilla. Trained in Krav Maga as a human, it was more akin to a full bodied spasm than an attack. The rage, the confusion, the frustration, the weight of her new, unwanted existence was violently working its way through Laura’s body. And so Carmilla kept her arms passively at her side, allowing Laura this. Carmilla took a step back, and then another, and another as she was slowly driven up against a tree.  
  
“Fight back damn it, why won’t you ever fight back?” Laura demanded, tears streaming down her eyes.  
  
“I am fighting,” Carmilla whispered. “Just not with you.”  
  
“Stop it, I hate you…” Laura sobbed, the rhythm of her fists slowing down to match her words. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you so much. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this…”  
  
“I know. No one ever does.” Slowly, sensing a shift within the other woman, Carmilla encircled her in her arms, the fists halting completely to rest on Carmilla’s chest slightly below her bruised collar bones.  
  
“Then why?” Encompassed in the older woman’s arms, Laura let the upheaval shake through her lungs and wrack through her body. She was a vampire. It was all too much. She didn’t know if she could ever forgive Carmilla, but she didn’t know if she could survive without her either. “What were you thinking?” She repeated her original question. She wanted, she needed to know why. Why did she have to die? Why did she have to come back like this?  
  
“I was thinking of you, cupcake,” Carmilla answered simply, truthfully. There was nothing else that she could say.  
  
Letting out a near animalistic noise of pain, Laura crumpled her full weight against Carmilla. There they remained like that for a long time, entirely silent and barely moving save for Carmilla gently stroking the hair of the girl she loved.  
  
Laura had the frightening realization of just how still her body could be now that she no longer needed to breathe. The startling realization that neither she nor Carmilla were actually breathing. When she was younger, Laura had always dreamed, had always imagined that when she found her own true love that their lungs, perhaps even their hearts, would beat in sync. Physically, it was probably impossible. But how beautiful, how sublime it would have been to breathe in unison with the woman you loved. And now?  
  
It was too much. Laura shifted her position, needing to take action. Needing to find some control in the entire situation.  
  
At first, Carmilla only felt an unexpected soft wetness on her neck. For a moment it was out of place, this tender and salty kiss. Then it shifted. Laura tentatively tested the strength her own fangs against the older vampire’s skin. And then harder. Deeper. Bolder. At this rate, if so inclined, Laura could very well tear away a sizable chunk of Carmilla’s neck or, more likely, drain her dry. Carmilla exposed her neck further, taking her punishment and finding pleasure in it as Laura learned how her fangs worked.  
  
Not satisfied with Carmilla’s blood—no vampire ever could be—Laura reached her hand around Carmilla’s skull and brought their lips crashing together. Carmilla could taste her own tainted blood on the fresh vampire’s lips.  
  
Distantly she knew that Laura’s blood now flowed similarly in her veins: tainted and cursed. It would never again have that same sweetness it once held. Pushing this realization from her mind, Carmilla opened her mouth further, beckoning Laura in. Laura continued to bite and suck on Carmilla’s lips, her neck, at any part of skin exposed to the mountain air and at times still trying to draw blood and succeeding. Carmilla was all too happy to allow her. She imagined that this was only the beginning.  
  
When Laura finally pulled back and relented, it was from surprise of the taste of salt on her lips. “I thought you said vampires didn’t cry.” Her voice both accusing and confusingly tender.  
  
“Trade secret.” Carmilla forced a small smile.

* * *

  
They sat on the snow, neither bothered by the below freezing temperature but both moving closer into each other needing the strained physical comfort as they watched the light recede from the world. A ways off a small, weak column of smoke rise hesitantly up to the sky.  
  
“Looks like the ginger twins managed to make another fire,” Carmilla noted with a quiet sense of relief. While at times the two were utterly useless and annoying, she lacked the strength to deal with any further deaths from this mountain. Especially as they had started to begrudgingly grow on her. Part of her knew they should head back soon, but Laura wasn’t ready yet. Laura was Carmilla’s priority. Always had been and probably always would be. The only thing that had shifted was the length of the ‘always would be.’ They were no longer on a mortal timeline.  
  
“It’s funny but I think I can see clearer now that it’s getting dark,” Laura observed. In her head, she was compiling a list of what was new, what had changed, what was better, and what had been lost. It helped. Somewhat. “The darkness doesn’t hurt my eyes as much.”  
  
“Part of why I’m so nocturnal.”  
  
Laura wasn’t quite sure if it actually helped, these answers and explanations, but it added some sense of normalcy to her now less than normal situation. She wasn’t alone. There was Carmilla, who wasn’t entirely evil but who wasn’t entirely forgiven either. There might be other less evil vampires as well. That’s what Laura told herself over and over. She may have somehow managed to die in a hiking accident while fleeing a supernatural force attacking her college campus. She may have been brought back to life as a vampire. She may be stuck, eternally young in an eighteen year old's body, which seemed like both a blessing and a fate literally worse than death. But she wasn’t alone. And she wasn’t evil yet. At least, she didn’t think she was.  
  
“Was this what it was like when you became… like this?” Laura gestured at herself, still not quite able to call herself a vampire. “Everything so loud and overwhelming? I swear I can hear every pine cone in a five mile radius moving in the wind.” She had never known pine cones to be particularly loud before but their shape apparently lent themselves to the strangest whistling as the wind rattled past.  
  
“You get used to it.” Carmilla shrugged, kicking at a stone. Laura was both dead and alive. In a way, she felt like she was grieving the Laura she had lost, still not knowing how much of her had survived yet or not in the Laura sitting next to her. The sadness was overwhelming and confusing. “You’ll learn how to filter sounds out and focus on the important ones. It’s a bit maddening at first but you get over it. At least you don’t have to go through it twice.”  
  
“Twice?”  
  
“Well breaking free from a coffin isn’t the same thing but it’s close,” Carmilla tried to speak casually, but the edge of past trauma laced her words. In hopes to distract herself, she scooped up some snow at her feet and began packing it into an acceptable snow ball.  
  
“What was that like? I mean breaking free…?” Laura was truly curious, hoping to hear a story that could help her. She wanted a distraction. Secretly, she wanted to make Carmilla suffer just a bit for having done this to her.  
  
“Liberating.” Carmilla’s voice was dead, immediately giving her lie away, as she tossed her snowball into the darkness.  
  
“No really. What was it like?”  
  
Carmilla leaned back, staring up at the darkening sky, and gently conceded. “Oh, you know, just the most traumatizing thing I ever experienced. No big deal, buttercup.”  
  
Laura hesitated as she reached out and then decided against covering Carmilla's hand in her own. She had wanted to cause Carmilla pain but now having done so, she found no joy, no reprieve in it.  
  
Carmilla sighed, exhaling all the unnecessary oxygen she had collected in her lungs. She curled her legs up into herself. “You think you’d go mad from the skittering, scratching of the bugs, but its really the silence that eats away at you. You forget what’s real and your mind catches only on the painful memories. You can put yourself literally through hell… The bomb that freed me, I thought I was being swallowed up by hell itself. I laid in my coffin too blind to move for at least a day. It was just the breeze cutting across my face and the sun burning my skin. Everything was too much and it was more than I could stand. I wanted to die more then than ever before. Even the stars were too bright… It took me another day to kick my way completely out of my coffin. I was so weak I couldn’t stand.”  
  
Carmilla had never spoken about this out loud to anyone in such detail before. She had no idea where to look or what to do with her hands. She quietly punched the snow besides her. “This was not the world as I had known it. It was if the gods themselves had waged war on the earth. Broken trees snapped like twigs… men’s corpses scattered and blown to pieces. There were so many body parts…  In all my years as a vampire, I had never seen anything so horrific.” Carmilla shivered involuntarily. “I dragged myself to the nearest corpse… And then to the next…” Carmilla’s voice grew distant as she spoke. “We do what we have to in order to survive. Sometimes we do even worse things so that the people we love will survive.”  
  
“Carmilla…” Laura started, her voice hoarse.  
  
“If I even caused you a fraction of that pain bringing you back, I’m sorry beyond words.” Carmilla looked up, holding Laura’s eyes to the best that her courage would allow. “In that moment, all I was thinking was that I couldn’t lose you. I’m not… strong enough to lose you.”  
  
Laura couldn’t forgive Carmilla and so she said nothing for a long time. Finally, she reached out and held Carmilla’s hand. “Am I still me? Am I still Laura?”  
  
“If you want to be, yes.”  
  
“Are you still who you were when you were…?”  
  
“Mircalla? No. I didn’t want to be. Besides, the daughter of a count has no place in a world like this.” Carmilla stared back off into the distance and examined the stars. They were so much brighter on the mountain. Like so many times before, she wondered what were they to this light.

Fools, they were probably fools.

* * *

  
Laura lazily followed behind Carmilla, neither woman overcome with real urgency to return to their friends. Carmilla was lost in her thoughts while Laura silently experimented with her fangs, finding the action of them uncoiling intriguing and strangely addicting. She ran her tongue across them thoughtfully, an action that did not go unnoticed by Carmilla. Becoming aware the affect it was having on Carmilla, how her pupils were dilating slightly with desire, Laura retracted her fangs, blushing slightly.  
  
“Why don’t you walk around with your fangs out? It’s not like you need to hide from us. From them now I guess.” Laura corrected herself, wondering if coming to terms with being a vampire would be easier or harder than when she accepted that she was gay. “I mean fangs are super cool and intimidating, am I right?”  
  
Carmilla stopped and turned around, tilting her head to the side in amusement. “Try saying your last name with your fangs.” When Laura looked at her quizzically, Carmilla urged her further. “Try it.”  
  
Dubiously, Laura examined Carmilla before obeying the suggestion. “Hollith,” Confused, Laura repeated it again, “Hollith. Hollith.” Then, retracting her fangs again, she smiled slightly. “It gives you a lisp. That’s why I never saw your fangs, your lisp?” It made her laugh, her first as a vampire. It felt very much the same: lighthearted, refreshing, reviving.  
  
“You can either look intimidating or sound it.” Playfully Carmilla added, “It’s just the way the world works, cutie.”  
  
“Well that’s a load of crap,” Laura added in disappointment.  
  
“Tell me about it.” Carmilla smiled softly. “I’ve been complaining about it for centuries.”  
  
In that moment, the full weight of the conversation became apparent to Laura. The lighthearted air immediately dissipated and the two simply regarded each other. Sensing the shift and unsure if Laura would say anything further at that point, Carmilla turned and started to continue to walk back to camp. Sensing Laura was not following her however, she paused and turned around. A confused concern darkened Laura’s features.  
  
“What am I going to do?” Laura’s voice fully embodying the helplessness that had been welling up inside her.  
  
“Tomorrow?” Carmilla tilted her head to the side, knowing she wasn’t getting off so easy.  
  
“No, forever. What am I going to do for centuries on end?” It was exhausting to realize she could exist for that long. How did people do it? How had Carmilla been doing it?  
  
Carmilla shrugged. “Well, what do you want to do?”  
  
“I didn’t want to live forever,” Laura spoke after a moment of careful consideration.  
  
“No one wants to die either,” Carmilla countered almost instantly.  
  
Laura hesitantly glanced at Carmilla, weighing her words carefully before deciding to speak honestly. “I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.”  
  
“It is unforgivable what I did. But I also can’t bring myself to completely regret my actions either,” Carmilla spoke plainly. “I’m stuck with me for all eternity but you’re not. You can leave whenever you want.” There was a sadness, a resignation to Carmilla’s voice.  
  
“Is that what you want?” Her voice small and broken.  
  
Carmilla shook her head, looking at Laura imploringly, lovingly, and with a deep fear of loss. Her eyes conveyed more than her words ever could. “Why would I ever want that?”  
  
“I’m going to need some time,” Laura sighed.  
  
“Well, we do have eternity on our hands.”  
  
“Guess I can blame you for that.”  
  
“Guess so, cupcake.”

* * *

  
Laura didn’t realize it until later but she was surprised that LaFontaine and Perry had waited for them. Laura wouldn’t blame them if they were gone. It was one thing to travel as three humans with one vampire. Their numbers had now shifted dramatically to two humans and two vampires. What was once possibly rather idiotic was now realistically suicidal.  
  
But her friends were still there waiting, huddled closely together around a weak fire. LaFontaine was pale, smelling faintly of stale blood and of freshly forming scar tissue. Later if they ever had a moment, Laura wanted to tell LaFontaine about how the world really smelled and about all the sounds that had now opened up to her. It seemed like something her friend would find infinitely fascinating.  
  
The two stood up as Carmilla and Laura emerged from the trees. It was an awkward greeting, both sides wanting to reach out and embrace the other but both sides unsure about how to initiate. Unable to foist the entire blame of her new condition entirely on Carmilla, Laura was faced with two friends who loved her enough to betray her. In turn, they too seemed perplexed about how to act around the demonic result of their own decisions. They made her this way and yet could not face the consequences. No one knew quite how to adjust to the new reality yet.  
  
Finally after moments of painful awkwardness, LaFontaine crossed the remaining distance and engulfed Laura in a huge hug. Perry followed behind, entirely surrounding the new vampire with warmth and love. Carmilla stood off to the side, hands shoved in her pockets, kicking at the ground with her toe and feeling her normal sense of loneliness return.  
  
“Good, you’re back,” Perry commented into the silence after the three had broken apart. “About time. The village is not far off. Let’s go.”  
  
LaFontaine nodded weakly. “This forest isn’t safe. We need to leave.”  
  
Carmilla shook her head, inserting herself into conversation. “Not that I want to prolong an Odyssean homecoming but it’d be safer if we set off tomorrow.”  
  
Perry’s eyes went wide, gesturing impatiently as she spoke. “What are you talking about? We need to go and we need to go now. We’re almost entirely out of food. LaFontaine needs to go to the hospital. And it’s just not safe here.”  
  
“Do I look like someone who enjoys camping? It’s not safe for us to leave the mountain either.” Carmilla tipped her head to the side as she spoke, partially exposing the prominent and distinctive bite marks Laura had left behind before gesturing to her wrist where she had a similar, self-inflicted wound. They were healing up quickly but, due to her rather limited diet on the mountain, were not healing as fast they should. “Half the people in these towns are descended from self-styled vampire hunters, or at least they like to think that they are. Not to mention that anyone with eyes who has seen the trailer to Twilight will know what these bite marks mean. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not get staked the moment I leave this godforsaken mountain.”  
  
“That’s exactly why the mountain isn’t safe,” LaFontaine replied exasperated.  
  
“What are you talking about?” Laura interjected.  
  
“Look, we went back to where you fell, Laura. It wasn’t an accident. There was a tripwire. Luckily the device it was attached to seems to be iced over. This whole area is full of them. I’m surprised you two didn’t run into others on your way back,” LaFontaine explained, not able to look at Laura when they first started speaking.  
  
“Excuse me?” Laura blinked, her mind not able to catch ahold on to what LaFontaine was saying.  
  
“I mean, it makes sense. You can’t become a vampire unless you were murdered. You might not have been the intended target, but it definitely wasn’t an accident either.” LaFontaine had debated with Perry about whether or not to disclose what they found. While Perry was not entirely convinced, they maintained that Laura deserved to know the truth. “Which is ironic because if it was a trap intended for vampires, they really embraced that whole saying about how you create what you fear.”  
  
The world, ever changing under Laura’s feet, shifted again. Feeling her legs start to go weak, Laura allowed herself to sink down into the snow. Carmilla instantly crouched down beside her. “All the more reason to be careful and not rush into that town. Think about it—it’s a perimeter. I’d rather not waltz in with a vampire pride flag and pray for the angry mob trying to a win a congeniality award.”  
  
“LaFontaine needs the hospital,” Perry sputtered.  
  
“Then go on without us.” Carmilla stood her ground. “We’ll only get you killed as is.”  
  
“We’ve come all this way together. We’re not separating now.” LaFontaine shook their head, similarly standing their ground. “We do not back down from the hardcore.”  
  
“Sometimes I wonder if you know what the word hardcore actually means,” Carmilla sighed. “I think you’re confusing it with suicidal tendencies or just complete stupidity.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight tw of Perry struggling with LaFontaine's pronouns.
> 
> “You’ve got to let go of who you were, to become who you will be.”  
> — Janet Fitch

“How do you stand it?” Laura inquired as Carmilla emerged from the bathroom with a small cloud of steam. Laura had clearly been thinking about this question for a long time.  
  
“Excuse me?” Carmilla crossed the room and opened the fridge. Despite the limited wonders of the hot water, her muscles were still sore. She noted that the ropes had been stowed away out of sight and just about everything that had been knocked over during the confrontation with Will had been put back. It looked almost like a normal dorm room. She retrieved a Bad Wolf soda and was greeted with the satisfying sound of carbonation escaping as she pried open the can.  
  
She took a small sip, eyeing Laura. The concoction was a strange overly syrupy mixture of bubbles and chemicals. Carmilla had no idea how they got off on calling it grape flavored soda. Any resemblance between the two was laughable at best. Still, it was oddly delicious. Plus it was Laura’s, which helped.  
  
“How do you stand being a vampire?” Laura pressed.  
  
Carmilla glared as she flopped back down on her bed. She took a long pull of her soda, suddenly not enjoying it as much. “How do you stand being so short?” She shot back.  
  
“It’s not the same.”  
  
“From where I’m sitting, it is.”  
  
“But you eat people,” Laura’s hand instinctively came up to cover the two small bandages on her neck. Carmilla smiled softly to herself, remembering the softness of her neck and all the other things she wanted to do to it.  
  
“And you come up to people’s belly buttons.”  
  
“You _eat_ people,” Laura repeated, her hands balling up in frustration.  
  
“You eat animals,” Carmilla shrugged, trying to maintain her rapidly dwindling patience.  
  
“Carmilla, you eat _people._ ” Laura was starting to sound like a broken record.  
  
“So do you,” Carmilla changed tactics, raising her eyebrows flirtatiously.  
  
Flustered, Laura’s face reddened almost immediately. “That’s different. And I… it’s different!”  
  
“Is it? No one questions the shark’s remorse. _That’s how the world works, cutie._ ” She imitated Laura’s impression of her before turning serious. “It’s not a matter of standing anything. This is who I am.”  
  
She opened the nearest book to signal the end of the conversation. She tried not to feel as insulted as she was. Her eyes skipped across the page, unable to land on a sentence. However she refused to appear as if she was anything but absorbed in the open book before her. Laura’s gaze didn’t leave her, but Carmilla had absolutely no desire to discuss ethics and morality with a someone that had just held her captive for nine days. It was a painful reminder that Laura was, at best, a child. Children were always the cruelest in their naivety. Innocence was a dangerous weapon.  
  
Laura continued to study Carmilla, longing for a sign that somewhere underneath a history of blood lust and kidnapping that Carmilla was a good person. It was a good five minutes of silence.  
  
“You know what, how can _you_ stand it?” Carmilla looked up from her book, disgusted and no longer able to keep it inside.  
  
Laura recoiled, surprised. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Hitler, Stalin, the atom bomb, the Inquisition, the African slave trade, the repeated and sometimes successful attempts to obliterate an entire race and culture. Hell, even global warning. All human actions, all your legacy, sweet cheeks. Vampires, we really only kill to eat and often we don’t need to kill for that. But you humans, why do you do it? Face it, any evil in vampires stems from our humanity.”  
  
Laura was struck dumb. She wanted to reject Carmilla’s words, but wasn't sure how or if she could. She wanted to believe that Carmilla was twisting it, but was she?  
  
“Open a history book, Laura. This 'vampire are evil' business, it’s like condemning the tiger but pardoning a serial killer.” Carmilla stood up flinging her book to the bed. “You know what, I’m out of here.”  
  
“Carmilla… Carm wait.” Laura jumped up as Carmilla flung the door open, reeling at how the conversation had changed directions.  
  
“What?” The vampire paused, her voice exhausted.  
  
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that,” Laura began, almost pleading for some reason.  
  
“No, you did mean it like that. You just didn’t think.” Carmilla shook her head sadly. “That’s your problem, not mine. I know what I am and I’m sick of being everyone’s nightmare.” And with that, she closed the door behind her.

* * *

  
_[Present Day]_

Through the window, Laura watched the birth of another gray winter morning. After being in the wilderness for days on end, it was a strange phenomenon to witness the sunrise from the civilized side of the glass. The safety now afforded by the four hospital walls seemed almost wonderfully claustrophobic. In a previous life, she would have described the waiting room as dull. Sterile. As a vampire, the monotony was heavily accented by the overpowering din of humanity that made her nostalgic for the mountains.  
  
How loud the world was now! The cacophony of sounds demanded her constant attention: crying children and sobbing adults, anxious whispers and hopeful voices, words muddled by drugs and illness. The world was drenched in screaming, yelling, and anguished cries. There were footsteps, squeaky wheels, staticky televisions all blasting different channels, and whirring machines that buzzed and beeped. She could hear it all as if it was in the same room. The mundane noises of life and death blended together like never before for the young vampire. Laura felt herself verging on sensory overload.  
  
She longed to roam free and wild where the cold no longer bothered her and the noises were less overwhelming. Stuck in the waiting room made her newly reanimated muscles itch with boredom and anticipation. She longed to run through the relative silence of the trees.  
  
And yet, she lingered. She waited. In theory, she stayed for her friends but in actuality she wasn’t so sure. She hadn’t seen Perry and LaFontaine since yesterday afternoon. The doctors had whisked the two down confusingly repetitive hallways and behind closed doors. Laura could not, did not follow.  
  
Far past needing medical attention, both Laura and Carmilla had refused treatment. This subjected them to a rather lengthy and patronizing speech about the consequences of their ill-formed decisions. Distracted by the scent of fresh blood surrounding her, Laura had barely paid attention. She had other, actual bad decisions to come to terms with first.  
  
As soon as she was able, she had excused herself with the claim that the sight of blood made her faint. Carmilla followed not far behind as Laura escaped to the waiting room. Unlike Carmilla, she hadn’t left the small room since.  
  
Truth be told, Laura wasn’t sure if she wanted to see Perry and LaFontaine. If she could.  
  
The two vampires had sat in the waiting room engulfed in silence for hours on end. Neither seemed to tire, neither seemed move to speak. It was both comfortable and agonizing. At some point Carmilla reached out and took Laura’s hand with a gentle squeeze. Laura ignored the urge to respond by curling up against her for comfort. They remained much in the same position until the morning came and Carmilla slipped off with a word.  
   
Carmilla returned twenty minutes later, two styrofoam cups in hand. There was something oddly comforting about the sight of the disposable cups. In a way their normalcy made the world make sense again. Maybe Laura wasn’t cut out for roaming in the wild after all.  
  
“I thought we could both use this,” Carmilla winked, holding out one of the cups to Laura. “Careful not to spill. And keep the lid on.”  
  
Assuming she was being handed coffee or hot chocolate, Laura was momentarily surprised that the cup was room temperature. Then there was the strong scent of fresh blood. It smelled better than freshly baked bread.  
   
She hungrily brought the cup to her mouth only vaguely aware that this was the first time she had tasted human blood since being turned. The entire contents were gulped down in a matter of seconds. It was satisfying on a deep, all encompassing level. A pinkness, a liveliness returned to her previously dull skin, a phenomenon she had only ever witnessed with Carmilla.  
  
“Careful now,” Carmilla smiled softly as she leaned in and with her thumb gently wiped away the small drop of blood that had settled on the corner of Laura’s mouth.  
  
 “Where’d you get that?” Laura asked. Her mind, now nourished, began spinning with possibilities, most not to the liking of her human sense of ethics.  
  
“I have my ways,” Carmilla grinned playfully as she sucked the small trace of blood off her thumb before holding out the second cup to Laura. “Here. Take mine.”  
  
Laura shook her head, holding firm and firmly repeating her question. “Where did you get it?”  
  
“It’s only a matter of finding where the surplus is stored,” Carmilla sighed, holding up her free hand in a gesture meant to illustrate the honesty of her statement. “Donated and freely given cupcake, just liberated for a slightly different purpose. Promise.”  
  
“Thank you.” Satisfied, Laura took the offered cup, determined to drink this one slower.  
  
“LaFontaine’s going to be fine,” Carmilla sat down beside Laura, sprawling her legs out. Her knee brushed up against Laura’s and there it stayed. Laura liked the contact but did nothing to encourage it. With a hint of pride Carmilla noted, “Didn’t even need stitches.”  
  
Laura only nodded distantly as she savored the blood. Was this what she had tasted like when Carmilla had bit her? If so, how had Carmilla not tried to feed off her more than once? How had Carmilla not drained her dry? Was the temptation, the hunger so easy to fend off and control? Or had Laura’s steady diet of hydrogenated oils and corn syrup made her taste so odd that it was an effective vampire deterrent?  
  
If so, perhaps LaFontaine should have a similar diet. Maybe then Laura would stop obsessing about their blood so much.  
  
“Mild frost bite and dehydration. Humans are so fragile.” Carmilla continued, her eyes observing Laura as she spoke.  When Laura continued her silence, Carmilla added, “Both of their parents are picking them up this afternoon. Do you want to see them?”  
  
Laura resolutely shook her head no as she drained the second cup.  
  
“Have you called your Dad yet?” Carmilla inquired after several more moments of silence.  
  
Again Laura shook her head, this time slightly less resolutely.  
  
“I’m not saying I have the market cornered on dark and broody, but just because you’re like me now doesn’t mean you have to be _like me_ if you know what I mean.” Carmilla tried to explain as patiently as she could. It was a struggle to adjust to this new version of Laura. She needed, she wanted the other girl to talk to her. To let her back in. “You’re still you.”  
  
Laura looked dejected in the unbecoming fluorescent lights. Holding back an Am I question, Laura instead asked, “How can I call him?”  
  
“Your cell phone perhaps. Or I’m sure that they have phones here that the nurses might let you use.” Carmilla titled her head to the side. “After that I imagine it’s only a matter of pressing the buttons in the right order and using your words.”  
  
“You know what I mean.” Laura shot Carmilla a look. “I’m not who I was when…”  
  
“You weren’t going to be who you were when you started Silas no matter what. Change is inevitable.” Carmilla bit her lip, her eyes wandering momentarily to the ceiling as if to find the heavens, before returning her full attention to Laura. The girl seemingly wanted a serious answer. “But I see your point. It’s a decision you might have to make eventually. It’s up to you if you want to make it now. However he is your dad. Maybe you should call him. In the very least, you’d have a chance to say good bye.”  
  
Laura recoiled. Whether or not to truly call her father had not been a question. Not really. She was stalling, taking her time to have a proper sulk. He was no doubt worried sick about her and he had every right to be. She had died after all. She realized that there was no kind, understanding fatherly smile or hug large enough to make being brought back as a vampire better.  
  
At some point he’d die. Arguably, children were supposed to survive their parents. However, he survived her, and now she would survive him. Would, could Laura still be in his life when he died? At what point would he realize that his only child never aged a day past eighteen?  
  
They were close. They had been close. She told him shortly after realizing that she was gay. But being a vampire was different. This was a secret she should probably keep. But how? _Oh, I developed a garlic allergy while at college. Funny how I’m a night person after all these years of being a morning person._ And, years later: _I found the most amazing moisturizer with sunscreen, it works miracles don’t you think?_ Would she have to fake her death years after actually dying?  
  
What did Carmilla do with her own family? She never brought them up. Was this why?  
  
Observing the tempest brewing across Laura’s face, Carmilla leaned in and kissed her softly on the cheek. “You okay?”  
  
“Just thinking,” Laura replied distantly.  
  
Carmilla frowned. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
“I’d rather not.”  
  
“Okay.” Carmilla decided for the moment not to press. Eventually, yes, they would have to talk. She might have to force the issue. It’d be hard. It’d hurt. But Laura being a vampire was so fresh, so raw for the both of them that she didn’t have the strength to push just yet. She wasn’t sure they’d survive it. “Are you still hungry?”  
  
Laura, grateful for an easier subject, wordlessly handed the second cup back to Carmilla. Yes or no questions were a beautiful thing. These she could handle.  
  
Carmilla stood up with a forced smile. “Be right back.”  
  
But Laura couldn’t live in an a yes or no world and called after Carmilla. “Why?”  
  
“Why what?” Carmilla looked over her shoulder. Why was such a dangerous question. It followed every atrocity.  
  
“In the forest, when you… why’d…?” Laura struggled, feeling her eyes becoming watery. Carmilla sat back down besides the younger woman and set the two cups down before placing her hand comfortingly on Laura’s thigh. “Is this what I am now?” Laura buried her head in her hands in disgust.  
  
Carmilla reached out and pulled Laura’s small frame closer. She rubbed small, rhythmic patterns in her back.

“Hey now… I’ll show you how to control it better. But what happened at the forest’s edge was different, do you understand? It’s not your fault.” Again, Carmilla’s eyes found the ceiling as if straining for the answers. “It’s part of the price we paid to have you back.”  
  
“I don’t understand.” Laura felt herself starting to tremble. “What price?”  
  
Carmilla practically whispered despite the emptiness of the waiting room. “My blood only goes so far. LaFontaine’s… made up the difference. They’re a part of you now. And because of that… you will always feel like there is something missing, something that only LaFontaine’s blood can satisfy. As long as LaFontaine’s blood line exists, it will haunt you.”  
  
“Thats horrible.” Laura’s eyes went wide with horror, a wave of self-disgust washed over her.  
  
Carmilla bit her lip, still unable to look at Laura. “It gets easier.” It sounded like a lie, even to her.  
  
“Did it get easier for you?” Laura nearly snarled.  
  
Carmilla’s eye wandered over to a dull, monotonous painting adorning the dreary wall. “That was a long time ago.”  
  
“That not really comforting.”  
  
“It was different. My Mother, she handpicked the blood price specially.”  
  
“Who was it?”  
  
“My fiancé. Always had a special flare, my Mother. Though there is some comfort in the fact that I never loved him,” Carmilla abruptly stood up, her words empty, her eyes vacant as if momentarily reliving some ancient horror. She rattled the empty styrofoam cups. For a moment she appeared like a woman misplaced out of her own time and age. The cups seemed strange and ill-fitting in her hands. Before Laura could say anything further, Carmilla quickly exited the room.

* * *

   
_[Earlier]_

With every step closer to civilization, LaFontaine and Perry became lighter. Their dissipating anxiousness was proportional to the growing tension within Carmilla and Laura. Despite or because of this transference, their pace had been quicker than it had been for days. Only a few miles from the village, Carmilla abruptly halted their progress at the forest’s edge. The last few miles to the village was a meadow. They would lose any protection afforded by the sinister forest. Each step would be out in the open and exposed.  
  
Not wanting to inspire another angry mob, Carmilla insisted on a somewhat more believable tale of a post-finals hiking trip gone horribly wrong. Perry’s knack for finding a “normal” explanation helped as they crafted a series of unfortunate events that would explain their lack of proper equipment while traipsing around on the mountainside for days on end in December.  
  
Finally arriving to a satisfactory story they all agreed on, the older vampire’s eyes locked on LaFontaine’s bandage in a way that made both red heads nervous. “What do you propose we do about that?”  
  
“My arm?” LaFontaine instinctually brought their arm closer inward.  
  
“Yes, the one with clearly visible bite marks that the hospital will undoubtably ask questions about. That arm,” Carmilla repeated, as if speaking to a dimwitted child.  
  
“Well, obviously, she was bitten. They. _They_ were bitten,” Perry’s reply inspired a vampiric eye roll. Her pronoun struggle caused LaFontaine to exhale slowly. Laura watched, feeling slightly separated from it all.  
  
“Ok, Betty Crocker, what on the mountainside bit the mad scientist here?” Carmilla crossed her arms, challenging them to offer her a reasonable explanation.  
  
“You don’t have the similar bite marks of a wolf or any wild animal, do you?” LaFontaine inquired, finally catching onto the full situation.  
  
“Do I look like a wild dog to you?” Carmilla arched her eyebrow, mildly insulted.  
  
“So what are you proposing?” Perry protectively placed her body between LaFontaine and Carmilla.  
  
“We just need to make sure LaFontaine doesn’t look like an extra from the Vampire Diaries.” How was this not obvious to everyone else? “Obviously I won’t reopen it too significantly. “  
  
“You can’t be serious,” Laura felt the hair rise up on the back of her neck. The smell of LaFontaine’s slowly healing wounds had been haunting her, eroding her self control. She had caught herself daydreaming more than once with a predatory smile on her face about sinking her teeth into LaFontaine’s jugular.

It was decided. Carmilla spoke reason and LaFontaine firmly agreed that it was the only way. At Carmilla’s suggestion, Laura sulkily moved a ways off. Every cell in her being revolted, rebelled against being far away. Perry was supposed to join Laura, but the Floor Don didn’t trust Carmilla’s fangs alone with her best friend. Maybe she didn’t trust being alone Laura’s fangs either.  
  
Carmilla had her back to Laura, her focus locked on tracing out various patterns over the exposed wound, silently proposing different solutions to herself. She failed to notice that Laura had not wandered far enough away.  
  
“This is going to hurt less than the alternative,” Carmilla offered by way of apology after begrudgingly reaching a plan she was satisfied with. LaFontaine braced themselves at the less than comforting words.  
  
The scent of fresh blood filled the cold winter air. The world fell away and Laura was overcome by a instinctual frenzy of want. Driven by hunger and the overwhelming sense that this and only this was her reason for existing, Laura surged towards LaFontaine.  
  
A hard slap across her face brought Laura reeling back to reality, back to humanity. Her predatory nature receded for the time being, leaving her fully aware of what had just intended to do. The horror and fear of LaFontaine and Perry were almost as bad as look of sad understanding from Carmilla.

* * *

  
_[Present Day]_

Laura wanted to smash the analog clock that stoically ticked away at her sanity. It had been over an hour since Carmilla had left. A darker, deeper fear had started to take hold. What if Carmilla wasn’t coming back?  
   
Laura stood up, closing her eyes, trying to find a way to sift through the millions of scents demanding her attention. She followed the faintly recognizable trail out of the waiting room and down the hall. It wasn’t easy. At first, the scent, mingling amongst all the others and was easily lost. It would go cold, forcing Laura to stop and retrace her steps until she found it again. She was sure she looked half mad.  
  
Eventually her efforts brought her to an unlocked on call room. She knocked, but pushed the door open before waiting for a reply.  
  
The room was full of empty cots. While they didn’t look comfortable, they held a sense of being adequate if one was sufficiently sleep deprived. After sleeping on rocks, they looked positively decadent.  
  
It was a decadence that apparently held no interest to Carmilla as she leaned up against the wall with her head buried in her hand. She looked up with an unreadable expression as Laura softly closed the door behind her. Well, not entirely unreadable. The older vampire failed to hide the embarrassing moisture rising up in her eyes.  
  
“There’s a nurse or someone in the room where they keep the blood,” Carmilla offered by way of explanation, her voice trembling slightly. “I’m waiting.”  
  
Laura took the space on the wall next to Carmilla. “For a supposed trade secret, you’re not guarding it too closely. At this point, every one will know that vampires cry,” Laura attempted to lighten the mood. When Carmilla did not even feign a smile, Laura’s frown deepened. Her hand slid down, finding the other woman’s hand, interlocking their fingers. “Carm, what’s wrong?”  
  
Carmilla lifted her free arm and then dropped in a helpless gesture, shaking her head slightly. Even with tears glistening in her eyes, she seemed almost amused. In a strange way, it reminded Laura of right after they had kissed for the first time and Laura had observed that Carmilla was a big black cat.  
  
“Carm… you’re scaring me. What’s wrong?”  
  
Whatever pain Carmilla was holding back broke free to the surface, contorting her features briefly before slipping back into her original unreadable expression. “All these centuries of supposed medical progress and all these miracle drugs, but yet this day and age still has nothing that would even remotely begin to help.”  
  
“Are you sick?” Laura felt as if she had stumbled into the middle of the conversation. Did vampires get sick? How? From bad blood, too much garlic, overexposure to the sun? Were they susceptible to colds and viruses, did they get hay fever?  
  
“You died. And I couldn’t save you,” Carmilla’s words entered the world hoarse and fragile. “I keep seeing you fall… every time I close my eyes… the way your body lay twisted in the snow…”  
  
The raw pain in the vampire’s voice had been mirrored not long ago by Laura. In some ways, mourning Carmilla seemed so distant now. She remembered how violently her heart beat and how sometimes even breathing hurt as if it was a lifetime ago. Everything had reminded her of Carmilla. Their shared dorm room was a minefield that rendered her nearly catatonic. The litany of nicknames ricocheted across her brain: cupcake, creampuff… would Laura ever be able to enter a bakery again?  
  
How many days had Laura stared off blankly, sometimes unable to even cry and other times convinced she’d never stop? While sleep seemed like the easier option, she would always wake up to reality that even if Carmilla’s bed wasn’t empty, it was Betty on the other side of the room now.  
  
It was then that Laura intimately understood the need for wakes and funerals. There had been no rituals to govern her movements and provide temporary comfort. Her mother’s funeral had been torture but now she recognized it for what it was. She longed for the structure, the distraction of what would need to be done. Without it Laura had no reason to function. Her grief skipped straight to the after funeral realization that time still went on. Lacking the catharsis of rituals, she was still stuck with discovering ways to both honor the emptiness and fill it.  
  
Everyone had been so nice. But Laura had felt untouchable, separate. Decimated. One tenth of her gone, ravaged, and destroyed by grief. Carmilla left behind a swirling vortex of indescribable emptiness. Loss was not just sadness, but a condition of forever shifting emotions. Grateful and blessed at having met Carmilla. Ashamed about their last conversation. Proud at how she had saved the school. Angry at how Carmilla had turned out to be exactly who Laura had needed to her be and how, because of that, she was gone. Both guilty and frustrated that Laura had never said what she truly felt. Tender at remembering how Carmilla would stretch out on her bed, languid like a cat, and read. Or how Carmilla would say her name. Devastated by all of it. It was a loss she thought she would carry with her for the rest of her life.  
  
Loss was a presence in itself. It had enveloped Laura in ways she had wished Carmilla had. It was if grief held her, whispered sweet, painful memories in her ears at all hours. It curled up against her like a young lover and bade her stay in bed just a little bit longer… truly the world did not need her yet. Five more minutes in grief’s embrace. Always just five more minutes. It was all to easy to linger, to stay, to let her grief overtake her.  
  
If given the choice, what would Laura have done to bring Carmilla back? Everything and anything probably. She was lucky that Carmilla was already a vampire. Carmilla hadn’t been so lucky with her.  
  
“I’m here now,” Laura offered softly. “I’ll be here for a while now.”  
  
Carmilla looked up, her face soaked in tears. Her eyes searched Laura, sensing some sort of shift in the other girl but unsure about trusting it. “All I’ve ever really done is watch people die.” Carmilla tried to center herself with a ragged inhale of breath. “I couldn’t do it again. Not with you.”  
  
Laura reached out and cupped Carmilla’s face, stroking her cheek softly with her thumb. It was a gesture Laura had seen in movies and read in books, intended to brush away the tears. All it accomplished was spreading them across Carmilla’s cheek. “You did what you had to do. I’m not saying it was right, but I know why you did it.”  
  
“I cursed you to always be left behind saying goodbye.” Carmilla jerked out of Laura’s touch, disgusted at herself.  
  
“You’re not alone anymore. We’ll learn to grieve together from now on,” Laura knew it wasn’t that easy, that simple, or that sweepingly romantic. Carmilla’s admission was devastating. It brought to the forefront what Laura had only allowed to dance at the edge of her mind previously. She couldn’t think about it, couldn’t handle it now. The truth would swallow her up and destroy her.  
   
“I’m here now and so are you. For now, can we just pretend that you saved me?” Laura begged before crashing against Carmilla’s lips. Laura sought to quiet the ravages of her emotions in the familiar landscapes of the other woman’s embrace. Hungrily she devoured her Carmilla’s mouth, seeking the alchemy of turning feelings into actions. Carmilla tasted like midnight, a darkness that obscured so much and yet revealed what was normally hidden behind the brightness.  
  
The force of the smaller woman’s actions, at first startling to Carmilla, eventually succeeded at lowering her to the ground. The cots were all but ignored. Laura took the lead and refused to relinquish control. Once firmly on the floor, Laura straddled the darker vampire and deepened the embrace. Her hands hungrily fought against the garments standing between her and the release and distraction she so desperately craved. Carmilla, starving for connection, was only too happy to comply, lunging into the embrace with a primal impatience of her own. She half moaned with anticipation and half purred as Laura finally succeeded with the zipper of Carmilla’s pants and began to tear the fabric away.

* * *

  
  
The ground was cool against her mostly bare skin. Carmilla cherished the way Laura’s sleeping form curled up against her and only clung harder when Carmilla tried to free her arm that had long gone numb. She was reminded of all those nights on the mountains.  
  
Distantly, she wondered if LaFontaine and Perry’s parents had been picked them up yet or if they could still make use of the shower in their room.  
  
Selfishly, she wondered where she would fit in Laura’s life once she woke. She wasn’t fool enough to believe herself forgiven, loved, or needed simply because they had slept together. She planted a soft kiss on the top of Laura’s head. Laura shifted, mumbling softly as she rejoined the world of the living.  
  
“You’re here,” Laura marveled.  
  
“For as long as you want me to be,” Carmilla promised, equally surprised that Laura had not slipped away. Maybe that meant she would stay. Maybe it only meant that she had stayed for now.  
  
“I dreamt I was a cat. Can I turn into a cat like you now?”  
  
Carmilla shrugged. “I don’t know buttercup. My Mother was a flock of crows and Will was a lizard. You’ll know what you are soon enough.”  
  
“Oh.” Laura took a moment to absorb the information. “I hope to be a hero, like you.” Her voice was filled with an almost childlike wonder and hope, a strange yet perfectly Laura way for a vampire to speak.  
  
“I’m anything but a hero,” Carmilla scoffed, looking off into the distance. She had hoped this illusion of her as a savior had ended with Laura’s death. Apparently, it hadn’t.  
  
“You saved Silas,” Laura reminded her fondly.  
  
“I couldn’t save you.”  
  
“You did what you could.”  
  
“What I did was unforgivable,” Carmilla corrected.  
  
“Probably. I still don’t know if I can live with it, but I’m not exactly alive am I?” Laura smiled playfully.  
  
“You’re killing me Hollis,” Carmilla groaned, allowing Laura’s apparent good mood to infect her for the time being.  
  
“You’re already dead,” Laura observed.  
  
Carmilla rolled her eyes, rewarding the bad joke with a kiss in hopes to shut Laura up. Hopefully such jokes would get old eventually. Hopefully Carmilla would be around for when this happened. If they still cared for each other that is. Maybe they wouldn’t. Carmilla wasn’t sure if she believed in a love that would last for centuries on end, but perhaps she was fool enough to hope.


End file.
